CHAPTER I

A PARTY AT WORSTED SKEYNES

The year was 1891, the month October, the day Monday. In the dark

outside the railway-station at Worsted Skeynes Mr. Horace Pendyce's

omnibus, his brougham, his luggage-cart, monopolised space. The face

of Mr. Horace Pendyce's coachman monopolised the light of the solitary

station lantern. Rosy-gilled, with fat close-clipped grey whiskers and

inscrutably pursed lips, it presided high up in the easterly air like

an emblem of the feudal system. On the platform within, Mr. Horace

Pendyce's first footman and second groom in long livery coats with

silver buttons, their appearance slightly relieved by the rakish cock of

their top-hats, awaited the arrival of the 6.15.

The first footman took from his pocket a half-sheet of stamped and

crested notepaper covered with Mr. Horace Pendyce's small and precise

calligraphy. He read from it in a nasal, derisive voice:

“Hon. Geoff, and Mrs. Winlow, blue room and dress; maid, small drab. Mr.

George, white room. Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, gold. The Captain, red. General

Pendyce, pink room; valet, back attic. That's the lot.”

The groom, a red-cheeked youth, paid no attention.

“If this here Ambler of Mr. George's wins on Wednesday,” he said, “it's

as good as five pounds in my pocket. Who does for Mr. George?”

“James, of course.”

The groom whistled.

“I'll try an' get his loadin' to-morrow. Are you on, Tom?”

The footman answered:

“Here's another over the page. Green room, right wing--that Foxleigh;

he's no good. 'Take all you can and give nothing' sort! But can't he

shoot just! That's why they ask him!”

From behind a screen of dark trees the train ran in.

Down the platform came the first passengers--two cattlemen with long

sticks, slouching by in their frieze coats, diffusing an odour of beast

and black tobacco; then a couple, and single figures, keeping as far

apart as possible, the guests of Mr. Horace Pendyce. Slowly they came

out one by one into the loom of the carriages, and stood with their eyes

fixed carefully before them, as though afraid they might recognise each

other. A tall man in a fur coat, whose tall wife carried a small bag of

silver and shagreen, spoke to the coachman:

“How are you, Benson? Mr. George says Captain Pendyce told him he

wouldn't be down till the 9.30. I suppose we'd better----”

Like a breeze tuning through the frigid silence of a fog, a high, clear

voice was heard:

“Oh, thanks; I'll go up in the brougham.”

Followed by the first footman carrying her wraps, and muffled in a white

veil, through which the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow's leisurely gaze caught

the gleam of eyes, a lady stepped forward, and with a backward glance

vanished into the brougham. Her head appeared again behind the swathe of

gauze.

“There's plenty of room, George.”

George Pendyce walked quickly forward, and disappeared beside her. There

was a crunch of wheels; the brougham rolled away.

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow raised his face again.

“Who was that, Benson?”

The coachman leaned over confidentially, holding his podgy white-gloved

hand outspread on a level with the Hon. Geoffrey's hat.

“Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, sir. Captain Bellew's lady, of the Firs.”

“But I thought they weren't---”

“No, sir; they're not, sir.”

“Ah!”

A calm rarefied voice was heard from the door of the omnibus:

“Now, Geoff!”

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow followed his wife, Mr. Foxleigh, and General

Pendyce into the omnibus, and again Mrs. Winlow's voice was heard:

“Oh, do you mind my maid? Get in, Tookson!”

Mr. Horace Pendyce's mansion, white and long and low, standing

well within its acres, had come into the possession of his

great-great-great-grandfather through an alliance with the last of the

Worsteds. Originally a fine property let in smallish holdings to tenants

who, having no attention bestowed on them, did very well and paid

excellent rents, it was now farmed on model lines at a slight loss. At

stated intervals Mr. Pendyce imported a new kind of cow, or partridge,

and built a wing to the schools. His income was fortunately independent

of this estate. He was in complete accord with the Rector and the

sanitary authorities, and not infrequently complained that his tenants

did not stay on the land. His wife was a Totteridge, and his coverts

admirable. He had been, needless to say, an eldest son. It was his

individual conviction that individualism had ruined England, and he had

set himself deliberately to eradicate this vice from the character of

his tenants. By substituting for their individualism his own tastes,

plans, and sentiments, one might almost say his own individualism, and

losing money thereby, he had gone far to demonstrate his pet theory that

the higher the individualism the more sterile the life of the community.

If, however, the matter was thus put to him he grew both garrulous

and angry, for he considered himself not an individualist, but what he

called a “Tory Communist.” In connection with his agricultural interests

he was naturally a Fair Trader; a tax on corn, he knew, would make all

the difference in the world to the prosperity of England. As he often

said: “A tax of three or four shillings on corn, and I should be farming

my estate at a profit.”

Mr. Pendyce had other peculiarities, in which he was not too individual.

He was averse to any change in the existing order of things, made lists

of everything, and was never really so happy as when talking of himself

or his estate. He had a black spaniel dog called John, with a long nose

and longer ears, whom he had bred himself till the creature was not

happy out of his sight.

In appearance Mr. Pendyce was rather of the old school, upright and

active, with thin side-whiskers, to which, however, for some years past

he had added moustaches which drooped and were now grizzled. He wore

large cravats and square-tailed coats. He did not smoke.

At the head of his dining-table loaded with flowers and plate, he sat

between the Hon. Mrs. Winlow and Mrs. Jaspar Bellew, nor could he

have desired more striking and contrasted supporters. Equally tall,

full-figured, and comely, Nature had fixed between these two women a

gulf which Mr. Pendyce, a man of spare figure, tried in vain to fill.

The composure peculiar to the ashen type of the British aristocracy

wintered permanently on Mrs. Winlow's features like the smile of a

frosty day. Expressionless to a degree, they at once convinced the

spectator that she was a woman of the best breeding. Had an expression

ever arisen upon these features, it is impossible to say what might have

been the consequences. She had followed her nurse's adjuration: “Lor,

Miss Truda, never you make a face--You might grow so!” Never since that

day had Gertrude Winlow, an Honourable in her own right and in that of

her husband, made a face, not even, it is believed, when her son was

born. And then to find on the other side of Mr. Pendyce that puzzling

Mrs. Bellew with the green-grey eyes, at which the best people of her

own sex looked with instinctive disapproval! A woman in her position

should avoid anything conspicuous, and Nature had given her a

too-striking appearance. People said that when, the year before last,

she had separated from Captain Bellew, and left the Firs, it was simply

because they were tired of one another. They said, too, that it looked

as if she were encouraging the attentions of George, Mr. Pendyce's

eldest son.

Lady Malden had remarked to Mrs. Winlow in the drawing-room before

dinner:

“What is it about that Mrs. Bellew? I never liked her. A woman situated

as she is ought to be more careful. I don't understand her being asked

here at all, with her husband still at the Firs, only just over the way.

Besides, she's very hard up. She doesn't even attempt to disguise it. I

call her almost an adventuress.”

Mrs. Winlow had answered:

“But she's some sort of cousin to Mrs. Pendyce. The Pendyces are related

to everybody! It's so boring. One never knows---”

Lady Malden replied:

“Did you know her when she was living down here? I dislike those

hard-riding women. She and her husband were perfectly reckless. One

heard of nothing else but what she had jumped and how she had jumped it;

and she bets and goes racing. If George Pendyce is not in love with her,

I'm very much mistaken. He's been seeing far too much of her in town.

She's one of those women that men are always hanging about!”

At the head of his dinner-table, where before each guest was placed

a menu carefully written in his eldest daughter's handwriting, Horace

Pendyce supped his soup.

“This soup,” he said to Mrs. Bellew, “reminds me of your dear old

father; he was extraordinarily fond of it. I had a great respect for

your father--a wonderful man! I always said he was the most determined

man I'd met since my own dear father, and he was the most obstinate man

in the three kingdoms!”

He frequently made use of the expression “in the three kingdoms,” which

sometimes preceded a statement that his grandmother was descended from

Richard III., while his grandfather came down from the Cornish giants,

one of whom, he would say with a disparaging smile, had once thrown a

cow over a wall.

“Your father was too much of an individualist, Mrs. Bellew. I have a

lot of experience of individualism in the management of my estate, and

I find that an individualist is never contented. My tenants have

everything they want, but it's impossible to satisfy them. There's a

fellow called Peacock, now, a most pig-headed, narrowminded chap. I

don't give in to him, of course. If he had his way, he'd go back to the

old days, farm the land in his own fashion. He wants to buy it from me.

Old vicious system of yeoman farming. Says his grandfather had it. He's

that sort of man. I hate individualism; it's ruining England. You won't

find better cottages, or better farm-buildings anywhere than on my

estate. I go in for centralisation. I dare say you know what I call

myself--a 'Tory Communist.' To my mind, that's the party of the future.

Now, your father's motto was: 'Every man for himself!' On the land that

would never do. Landlord and tenant must work together. You'll come over

to Newmarket with us on Wednesday? George has a very fine horse running

in the Rutlandshire a very fine horse. He doesn't bet, I'm glad to say.

If there's one thing I hate more than another, it's gambling!”

Mrs. Bellew gave him a sidelong glance, and a little ironical smile

peeped out on her full red lips. But Mr. Pendyce had been called away to

his soup. When he was ready to resume the conversation she was talking

to his son, and the Squire, frowning, turned to the Hon. Mrs. Winlow.

Her attention was automatic, complete, monosyllabic; she did not appear

to fatigue herself by an over-sympathetic comprehension, nor was she

subservient. Mr. Pendyce found her a competent listener.

“The country is changing,” he said, “changing every day. Country houses

are not what they were. A great responsibility rests on us landlords. If

we go, the whole thing goes.”

What, indeed, could be more delightful than this country-house life of

Mr. Pendyce; its perfect cleanliness, its busy leisure, its combination

of fresh air and scented warmth, its complete intellectual repose, its

essential and professional aloofness from suffering of any kind, and its

soup--emblematically and above all, its soup--made from the rich remains

of pampered beasts?

Mr. Pendyce thought this life the one right life; those who lived it the

only right people. He considered it a duty to live this life, with its

simple, healthy, yet luxurious curriculum, surrounded by creatures bred

for his own devouring, surrounded, as it were, by a sea of soup! And

that people should go on existing by the million in the towns, preying

on each other, and getting continually out of work, with all those

other depressing concomitants of an awkward state, distressed him. While

suburban life, that living in little rows of slate-roofed houses so

lamentably similar that no man of individual taste could bear to see

them, he much disliked. Yet, in spite of his strong prejudice in

favour of country-house life, he was not a rich man, his income barely

exceeding ten thousand a year.

The first shooting-party of the season, devoted to spinneys and the

outlying coverts, had been, as usual, made to synchronise with the last

Newmarket Meeting, for Newmarket was within an uncomfortable distance of

Worsted Skeynes; and though Mr. Pendyce had a horror of gaming, he liked

to figure there and pass for a man interested in sport for sport's sake,

and he was really rather proud of the fact that his son had picked up so

good a horse as the Ambler promised to be for so little money, and was

racing him for pure sport.

The guests had been carefully chosen. On Mrs. Winlow's right was

Thomas Brandwhite (of Brown and Brandwhite), who had a position in

the financial world which could not well be ignored, two places in the

country, and a yacht. His long, lined face, with very heavy moustaches,

wore habitually a peevish look. He had retired from his firm, and

now only sat on the Boards of several companies. Next to him was Mrs.

Hussell Barter, with that touching look to be seen on the faces of many

English ladies, that look of women who are always doing their duty,

their rather painful duty; whose eyes, above cheeks creased and

withered, once rose-leaf hued, now over-coloured by strong weather,

are starry and anxious; whose speech is simple, sympathetic, direct,

a little shy, a little hopeless, yet always hopeful; who are ever

surrounded by children, invalids, old people, all looking to them for

support; who have never known the luxury of breaking down--of these was

Mrs. Hussell Barter, the wife of the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would

shoot to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting on the Wednesday.

On her other hand was Gilbert Foxleigh, a lean-flanked man with a long,

narrow head, strong white teeth, and hollow, thirsting eyes. He came of

a county family of Foxleighs, and was one of six brothers, invaluable

to the owners of coverts or young, half-broken horses in days when, as

a Foxleigh would put it, “hardly a Johnny of the lot could shoot or ride

for nuts.” There was no species of beast, bird, or fish, that he could

not and did not destroy with equal skill and enjoyment. The only thing

against him was his income, which was very small. He had taken in Mrs.

Brandwhite, to whom, however, he talked but little, leaving her to

General Pendyce, her neighbour on the other side.

Had he been born a year before his brother, instead of a year after,

Charles Pendyce would naturally have owned Worsted Skeynes, and

Horace would have gone into the Army instead. As it was, having almost

imperceptibly become a Major-General, he had retired, taking with him

his pension. The third brother, had he chosen to be born, would have

gone into the Church, where a living awaited him; he had elected

otherwise, and the living had passed perforce to a collateral branch.

Between Horace and Charles, seen from behind, it was difficult to

distinguish. Both were spare, both erect, with the least inclination to

bottle shoulders, but Charles Pendyce brushed his hair, both before and

behind, away from a central parting, and about the back of his still

active knees there was a look of feebleness. Seen from the front they

could readily be differentiated, for the General's whiskers broadened

down his cheeks till they reached his moustaches, and there was in his

face and manner a sort of formal, though discontented, effacement, as of

an individualist who has all his life been part of a system, from which

he has issued at last, unconscious indeed of his loss, but with a vague

sense of injury. He had never married, feeling it to be comparatively

useless, owing to Horace having gained that year on him at the start,

and he lived with a valet close to his club in Pall Mall.

In Lady Malden, whom he had taken in to dinner, Worsted Skeynes

entertained a good woman and a personality, whose teas to Working Men in

the London season were famous. No Working Man who had attended them

had ever gone away without a wholesome respect for his hostess. She was

indeed a woman who permitted no liberties to be taken with her in any

walk of life. The daughter of a Rural Dean, she appeared at her best

when seated, having rather short legs. Her face was well-coloured, her

mouth, firm and rather wide, her nose well-shaped, her hair dark. She

spoke in a decided voice, and did not mince her words. It was to her

that her husband, Sir James, owed his reactionary principles on the

subject of woman.

Round the corner at the end of the table the Hon. Geoffrey Winlow was

telling his hostess of the Balkan Provinces, from a tour in which he

had just returned. His face, of the Norman type, with regular, handsome

features, had a leisurely and capable expression. His manner was easy

and pleasant; only at times it became apparent that his ideas were in

perfect order, so that he would naturally not care to be corrected. His

father, Lord Montrossor, whose seat was at Coldingham six miles away,

would ultimately yield to him his place in the House of Lords.

And next him sat Mrs. Pendyce. A portrait of this lady hung over the

sideboard at the end of the room, and though it had been painted by a

fashionable painter, it had caught a gleam of that “something” still in

her face these twenty years later. She was not young, her dark hair was

going grey; but she was not old, for she had been married at nineteen

and was still only fifty-two. Her face was rather long and very pale,

and her eyebrows arched and dark and always slightly raised. Her eyes

were dark grey, sometimes almost black, for the pupils dilated when she

was moved; her lips were the least thing parted, and the expression of

those lips and eyes was of a rather touching gentleness, of a rather

touching expectancy. And yet all this was not the “something”; that was

rather the outward sign of an inborn sense that she had no need to ask

for things, of an instinctive faith that she already had them. By that

“something,” and by her long, transparent hands, men could tell that

she had been a Totteridge. And her voice, which was rather slow, with

a little, not unpleasant, trick of speech, and her eyelids by second

nature just a trifle lowered, confirmed this impression. Over her bosom,

which hid the heart of a lady, rose and fell a piece of wonderful old

lace.

Round the corner again Sir James Malden and Bee Pendyce (the eldest

daughter) were talking of horses and hunting--Bee seldom from choice

spoke of anything else. Her face was pleasant and good, yet not quite

pretty, and this little fact seemed to have entered into her very

nature, making her shy and ever willing to do things for others.

Sir James had small grey whiskers and a carved, keen visage. He came of

an old Kentish family which had migrated to Cambridgeshire; his coverts

were exceptionally fine; he was also a Justice of the Peace, a Colonel

of Yeomanry, a keen Churchman, and much feared by poachers. He held

the reactionary views already mentioned, being a little afraid of Lady

Malden.

Beyond Miss Pendyce sat the Reverend Hussell Barter, who would shoot

to-morrow, but would not attend the race-meeting on Wednesday.

The Rector of Worsted Skeynes was not tall, and his head had been

rendered somewhat bald by thought. His broad face, of very straight

build from the top of the forehead to the base of the chin, was

well-coloured, clean-shaven, and of a shape that may be seen in

portraits of the Georgian era. His cheeks were full and folded, his

lower lip had a habit of protruding, and his eyebrows jutted out above

his full, light eyes. His manner was authoritative, and he articulated

his words in a voice to which long service in the pulpit had

imparted remarkable carrying-power--in fact, when engaged in private

conversation, it was with difficulty that he was not overheard. Perhaps

even in confidential matters he was not unwilling that what he said

should bear fruit. In some ways, indeed, he was typical. Uncertainty,

hesitation, toleration--except of such opinions as he held--he did not

like. Imagination he distrusted. He found his duty in life very clear,

and other people's perhaps clearer, and he did not encourage his

parishioners to think for themselves. The habit seemed to him a

dangerous one. He was outspoken in his opinions, and when he had

occasion to find fault, spoke of the offender as “a man of no

character,” “a fellow like that,” with such a ring of conviction that

his audience could not but be convinced of the immorality of that

person. He had a bluff jolly way of speaking, and was popular in his

parish--a good cricketer, a still better fisherman, a fair shot,

though, as he said, he could not really afford time for shooting. While

disclaiming interference in secular matters, he watched the tendencies

of his flock from a sound point of view, and especially encouraged them

to support the existing order of things--the British Empire and the

English Church. His cure was hereditary, and he fortunately possessed

some private means, for he had a large family. His partner at dinner was

Norah, the younger of the two Pendyce girls, who had a round, open face,

and a more decided manner than her sister Bee.

Her brother George, the eldest son, sat on her right. George was of

middle height, with a red-brown, clean-shaved face and solid jaw. His

eyes were grey; he had firm lips, and darkish, carefully brushed hair, a

little thin on the top, but with that peculiar gloss seen on the hair of

some men about town. His clothes were unostentatiously perfect. Such men

may be seen in Piccadilly at any hour of the day or night. He had

been intended for the Guards, but had failed to pass the necessary

examination, through no fault of his own, owing to a constitutional

inability to spell. Had he been his younger brother Gerald, he would

probably have fulfilled the Pendyce tradition, and passed into the Army

as a matter of course. And had Gerald (now Captain Pendyce) been George

the elder son, he might possibly have failed. George lived at his club

in town on an allowance of six hundred a year, and sat a great deal in a

bay-window reading Ruff's “Guide to the Turf.”

He raised his eyes from the menu and looked stealthily round. Helen

Bellew was talking to his father, her white shoulder turned a little

away. George was proud of his composure, but there was a strange longing

in his face. She gave, indeed, just excuse for people to consider her

too good-looking for the position in which she was placed. Her figure

was tall and supple and full, and now that she no longer hunted was

getting fuller. Her hair, looped back in loose bands across a broad low

brow, had a peculiar soft lustre.

There was a touch of sensuality about her lips. The face was too broad

across the brow and cheekbones, but the eyes were magnificent--ice-grey,

sometimes almost green, always luminous, and set in with dark lashes.

There was something pathetic in George's gaze, as of a man forced to

look against his will.

It had been going on all that past summer, and still he did not know

where he stood. Sometimes she seemed fond of him, sometimes treated him

as though he had no chance. That which he had begun as a game was now

deadly earnest. And this in itself was tragic. That comfortable ease

of spirit which is the breath of life was taken away; he could think

of nothing but her. Was she one of those women who feed on men's

admiration, and give them no return? Was she only waiting to make her

conquest more secure? These riddles he asked of her face a hundred

times, lying awake in the dark. To George Pendyce, a man of the world,

unaccustomed to privation, whose simple creed was “Live and enjoy,”

there was something terrible about a longing which never left him for a

moment, which he could not help any more than he could help eating, the

end of which he could not see. He had known her when she lived at the

Firs, he had known her in the hunting-field, but his passion was only of

last summer's date. It had sprung suddenly out of a flirtation started

at a dance.

A man about town does not psychologise himself; he accepts his condition

with touching simplicity. He is hungry; he must be fed. He is thirsty;

he must drink. Why he is hungry, when he became hungry, these inquiries

are beside the mark. No ethical aspect of the matter troubled him; the

attainment of a married woman, not living with her husband, did not

impinge upon his creed. What would come after, though full of unpleasant

possibilities, he left to the future. His real disquiet, far nearer, far

more primitive and simple, was the feeling of drifting helplessly in a

current so strong that he could not keep his feet.

“Ah yes; a bad case. Dreadful thing for the Sweetenhams! That young

fellow's been obliged to give up the Army. Can't think what old

Sweetenham was about. He must have known his son was hit. I should say

Bethany himself was the only one in the dark. There's no doubt Lady Rose

was to blame!” Mr. Pendyce was speaking.

Mrs. Bellew smiled.

“My sympathies are all with Lady Rose. What do you say, George?”

George frowned.

“I always thought,” he said, “that Bethany was an ass.”

“George,” said Mr. Pendyce, “is immoral. All young men are immoral. I

notice it more and more. You've given up your hunting, I hear.”

Mrs. Bellew sighed.

“One can't hunt on next to nothing!”

“Ah, you live in London. London spoils everybody. People don't take the

interest in hunting and farming they used to. I can't get George here at

all. Not that I'm a believer in apron-strings. Young men will be young

men!”

Thus summing up the laws of Nature, the Squire resumed his knife and

fork.

But neither Mrs. Bellew nor George followed his example; the one sat

with her eyes fixed on her plate and a faint smile playing on her lips,

the other sat without a smile, and his eyes, in which there was such a

deep resentful longing, looked from his father to Mrs. Bellew, and from

Mrs. Bellew to his mother. And as though down that vista of faces and

fruits and flowers a secret current had been set flowing, Mrs. Pendyce

nodded gently to her son.

CHAPTER II

THE COVERT SHOOT

At the head of the breakfast-table sat Mr. Pendyce, eating methodically.

He was somewhat silent, as became a man who has just read family

prayers; but about that silence, and the pile of half-opened letters on

his right, was a hint of autocracy.

“Be informal--do what you like, dress as you like, sit where you like,

eat what you like, drink tea or coffee, but----” Each glance of his

eyes, each sentence of his sparing, semi-genial talk, seemed to repeat

that “but”.

At the foot of the breakfast-table sat Mrs. Pendyce behind a silver urn

which emitted a gentle steam. Her hands worked without ceasing amongst

cups, and while they worked her lips worked too in spasmodic utterances

that never had any reference to herself. Pushed a little to her left

and entirely neglected, lay a piece of dry toast on a small white plate.

Twice she took it up, buttered a bit of it, and put it down again. Once

she rested, and her eyes, which fell on Mrs. Bellow, seemed to say: “How

very charming you look, my dear!” Then, taking up the sugar-tongs, she

began again.

On the long sideboard covered with a white cloth reposed a number of

edibles only to be found amongst that portion of the community which

breeds creatures for its own devouring. At one end of this row of viands

was a large game pie with a triangular gap in the pastry; at the other,

on two oval dishes, lay four cold partridges in various stages of

decomposition. Behind them a silver basket of openwork design was

occupied by three bunches of black, one bunch of white grapes, and a

silver grape-cutter, which performed no function (it was so blunt), but

had once belonged to a Totteridge and wore their crest.

No servants were in the room, but the side-door was now and again

opened, and something brought in, and this suggested that behind the

door persons were collected, only waiting to be called upon. It was, in

fact, as though Mr. Pendyce had said: “A butler and two footmen at least

could hand you things, but this is a simple country house.”

At times a male guest rose, napkin in hand, and said to a lady: “Can I

get you anything from the sideboard?” Being refused, he went and filled

his own plate. Three dogs--two fox-terriers and a decrepit Skye circled

round uneasily, smelling at the visitors' napkins. And there went up

a hum of talk in which sentences like these could be distinguished:

“Rippin' stand that, by the wood. D'you remember your rockettin'

woodcock last year, Jerry?” “And the dear old Squire never touched

a feather! Did you, Squire?” “Dick--Dick! Bad dog!--come and do your

tricks. Trust-trust! Paid for! Isn't he rather a darling?”

On Mr. Pendyce's foot, or by the side of his chair, whence he could

see what was being eaten, sat the spaniel John, and now and then Mr.

Pendyce, taking a small portion of something between his finger and

thumb, would say:

“John!--Make a good breakfast, Sir James; I always say a

half-breakfasted man is no good!”

And Mrs. Pendyce, her eyebrows lifted, would look anxiously up and down

the table, murmuring: “Another cup, dear; let me see--are you sugar?”

When all had finished a silence fell, as if each sought to get away

from what he had been eating, as if each felt he had been engaged in an

unworthy practice; then Mr. Pendyce, finishing his last grape, wiped his

mouth.

“You've a quarter of an hour, gentlemen; we start at ten-fifteen.”

Mrs. Pendyce, left seated with a vague, ironical smile, ate one mouthful

of her buttered toast, now very old and leathery, gave the rest to “the

dear dogs,” and called:

“George! You want a new shooting tie, dear boy; that green one's quite

faded. I've been meaning to get some silks down for ages. Have you had

any news of your horse this morning?”

“Yes, Blacksmith says he's fit as a fiddle.”

“I do so hope he'll win that race for you. Your Uncle Hubert once lost

four thousand pounds over the Rutlandshire. I remember perfectly; my

father had to pay it. I'm so glad you don't bet, dear boy!”

“My dear mother, I do bet.”

“Oh, George, I hope not much! For goodness' sake, don't tell your

father; he's like all the Pendyces, can't bear a risk.”

“My dear mother, I'm not likely to; but, as a matter of fact, there is

no risk. I stand to win a lot of money to nothing.”

“But, George, is that right?”

“Of course it's all right.”

“Oh, well, I don't understand.” Mrs. Pendyce dropped her eyes, a flush

came into her white cheeks; she looked up again and said quickly:

“George, I should like just a little bet on your horse--a real bet, say

about a sovereign.”

George Pendyce's creed permitted the show of no emotion. He smiled.

“All right, mother, I'll put it on for you. It'll be about eight to

one.”

“Does that mean that if he wins I shall get eight?”

George nodded.

Mrs. Pendyce looked abstractedly at his tie.

“I think it might be two sovereigns; one seems very little to lose,

because I do so want him to win. Isn't Helen Bellew perfectly charming

this morning! It's delightful to see a woman look her best in the

morning.”

George turned, to hide the colour in his cheeks.

“She looks fresh enough, certainly.”

Mrs. Pendyce glanced up at him; there was a touch of quizzicality in one

of her lifted eyebrows.

“I mustn't keep you, dear; you'll be late for the shooting.”

Mr. Pendyce, a sportsman of the old school, who still kept pointers,

which, in the teeth of modern fashion, he was unable to employ, set his

face against the use of two guns.

“Any man,” he would say, “who cares to shoot at Worsted Skeynes must

do with one gun, as my dear old father had to do before me. He'll get a

good day's sport--no barndoor birds” (for he encouraged his pheasants to

remain lean, that they might fly the better), “but don't let him expect

one of these battues--sheer butchery, I call them.”

He was excessively fond of birds--it was, in fact, his hobby, and he had

collected under glass cases a prodigious number of specimens of those

species which are in danger of becoming extinct, having really, in some

Pendycean sort of way, a feeling that by this practice he was doing them

a good turn, championing them, as it were, to a world that would soon

be unable to look upon them in the flesh. He wished, too, that his

collection should become an integral part of the estate, and be passed

on to his son, and his son's son after him.

“Look at this Dartford Warbler,” he would say; “beautiful little

creature--getting rarer every day. I had the greatest difficulty in

procuring this specimen. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what I

had to pay for him!”

Some of his unique birds he had shot himself, having in his youth made

expeditions to foreign countries solely with this object, but the great

majority he had been compelled to purchase. In his library were row upon

row of books carefully arranged and bearing on this fascinating subject;

and his collection of rare, almost extinct, birds' eggs was one of the

finest in the “three kingdoms.” One egg especially he would point to

with pride as the last obtainable of that particular breed. “This was

procured,” he would say, “by my dear old gillie Angus out of the bird's

very nest. There was just the single egg. The species,” he added,

tenderly handling the delicate, porcelain-like oval in his brown hand

covered with very fine, blackish hairs, “is now extinct.” He was,

in fact, a true bird-lover, strongly condemning cockneys, or rough,

ignorant persons who, with no collections of their own, wantonly

destroyed kingfishers, or scarce birds of any sort, out of pure

stupidity. “I would have them flogged,” he would say, for he believed

that no such bird should be killed except on commission, and for

choice--barring such extreme cases as that Dartford Warbler--in some

foreign country or remoter part of the British Isles. It was indeed

illustrative of Mr. Pendyce's character and whole point of view that

whenever a rare, winged stranger appeared on his own estate it was

talked of as an event, and preserved alive with the greatest care, in

the hope that it might breed and be handed down with the property; but

if it were personally known to belong to Mr. Fuller or Lord Quarryman,

whose estates abutted on Worsted Skeynes, and there was grave and

imminent danger of its going back, it was promptly shot and stuffed,

that it might not be lost to posterity. An encounter with another

landowner having the same hobby, of whom there were several in his

neighbourhood, would upset him for a week, making him strangely morose,

and he would at once redouble his efforts to add something rarer than

ever to his own collection.

His arrangements for shooting were precisely conceived. Little slips of

paper with the names of the “guns” written thereon were placed in a hat,

and one by one drawn out again, and this he always did himself. Behind

the right wing of the house he held a review of the beaters, who filed

before him out of the yard, each with a long stick in his hand, and no

expression on his face. Five minutes of directions to the keeper, and

then the guns started, carrying their own weapons and a sufficiency of

cartridges for the first drive in the old way.

A misty radiance clung over the grass as the sun dried the heavy

dew; the thrushes hopped and ran and hid themselves, the rooks cawed

peacefully in the old elms. At an angle the game cart, constructed on

Mr. Pendyce's own pattern, and drawn by a hairy horse in charge of an

aged man, made its way slowly to the end of the first beat:

George lagged behind, his hands deep in his pockets, drinking in the joy

of the tranquil day, the soft bird sounds, so clear and friendly, that

chorus of wild life. The scent of the coverts stole to him, and he

thought:

'.hat a ripping day for shooting!'

The Squire, wearing a suit carefully coloured so that no bird should

see him, leather leggings, and a cloth helmet of his own devising,

ventilated by many little holes, came up to his son; and the spaniel

John, who had a passion for the collection of birds almost equal to his

master's, came up too.

“You're end gun, George,” he said; “you'll get a nice high bird!”

George felt the ground with his feet, and blew a speck of dust off

his barrels, and the smell of the oil sent a delicious tremor darting

through him. Everything, even Helen Bellew, was forgotten. Then in

the silence rose a far-off clamour; a cock pheasant, skimming low, his

plumage silken in the sun, dived out of the green and golden spinney,

curled to the right, and was lost in undergrowth. Some pigeons passed

over at a great height. The tap-tap of sticks beating against trees

began; then with a fitful rushing noise a pheasant came straight out.

George threw up his gun and pulled. The bird stopped in mid-air, jerked

forward, and fell headlong into the grass sods with a thud. In the

sunlight the dead bird lay, and a smirk of triumph played on George's

lips. He was feeling the joy of life.

During his covert shoots the Squire had the habit of recording his

impressions in a mental note-book. He put special marks against such as

missed, or shot birds behind the waist, or placed lead in them to the

detriment of their market value, or broke only one leg of a hare at a

time, causing the animal to cry like a tortured child, which some men do

not like; or such as, anxious for fame, claimed dead creatures that

they had not shot, or peopled the next beat with imaginary slain, or

too frequently “wiped an important neighbour's eye,” or shot too many

beaters in the legs. Against this evidence, however, he unconsciously

weighed the more undeniable social facts, such as the title of Winlow's

father; Sir James Malden's coverts, which must also presently be shot;

Thomas Brandwhite's position in the financial world; General Pendyce's

relationship to himself; and the importance of the English Church.

Against Foxleigh alone he could put no marks. The fellow destroyed

everything that came within reach with utter precision, and this was

perhaps fortunate, for Foxleigh had neither title, coverts, position,

nor cloth! And the Squire weighed one thing else besides--the pleasure

of giving them all a good day's sport, for his heart was kind.

The sun had fallen well behind the home wood when the guns stood waiting

for the last drive of the day. From the keeper's cottage in the hollow,

where late threads of crimson clung in the brown network of Virginia

creeper, rose a mist of wood smoke, dispersed upon the breeze. Sound

there was none, only that faint stir--the far, far callings of men and

beasts and birds--that never quite dies of a country evening. High above

the wood some startled pigeons were still wheeling, no other life in

sight; but a gleam of sunlight stole down the side of the covert and

laid a burnish on the turned leaves till the whole wood seemed quivering

with magic. Out of that quivering wood a wounded rabbit had stolen and

was dying. It lay on its side on the slope of a tussock of grass,

its hind legs drawn under it, its forelegs raised like the hands of a

praying child. Motionless as death, all its remaining life was centred

in its black soft eyes. Uncomplaining, ungrudging, unknowing, with

that poor soft wandering eye, it was going back to Mother Earth. There

Foxleigh, too, some day must go, asking of Nature why she had murdered

him.

CHAPTER III

THE BLISSFUL HOUR

It was the hour between tea and dinner, when the spirit of the country

house was resting, conscious of its virtue, half asleep.

Having bathed and changed, George Pendyce took his betting-book into the

smoking-room. In a nook devoted to literature, protected from draught

and intrusion by a high leather screen, he sat down in an armchair and

fell into a doze.

With legs crossed, his chin resting on one hand, his comely figure

relaxed, he exhaled a fragrance of soap, as though in this perfect

peace his soul were giving off its natural odour. His spirit, on the

borderland of dreams, trembled with those faint stirrings of chivalry

and aspiration, the outcome of physical well-being after a long day in

the open air, the outcome of security from all that is unpleasant and

fraught with danger. He was awakened by voices.

“George is not a bad shot!”

“Gave a shocking exhibition at the last stand; Mrs. Bellew was with him.

They were going over him like smoke; he couldn't touch a feather.”

It was Winlow's voice. A silence, then Thomas Brandwhite's:

“A mistake, the ladies coming out. I never will have them myself. What

do you say, Sir James?”

“Bad principle--very bad!”

A laugh--Thomas Brandwhite's laugh, the laugh of a man never quite sure

of himself.

“That fellow Bellew is a cracked chap. They call him the 'desperate

character' about here. Drinks like a fish, and rides like the devil. She

used to go pretty hard, too. I've noticed there's always a couple like

that in a hunting country. Did you ever see him? Thin, high-shouldered,

white-faced chap, with little dark eyes and a red moustache.”

“She's still a young woman?”

“Thirty or thirty-two.”

“How was it they didn't get on?”

The sound of a match being struck.

“Case of the kettle and the pot.”

“It's easy to see she's fond of admiration. Love of admiration plays old

Harry with women!”

Winlow's leisurely tones again

“There was a child, I believe, and it died. And after that--I know there

was some story; you never could get to the bottom of it. Bellew chucked

his regiment in consequence. She's subject to moods, they say, when

nothing's exciting enough; must skate on thin ice, must have a man

skating after her. If the poor devil weighs more than she does, in he

goes.”

“That's like her father, old Cheriton. I knew him at the club--one of

the old sort of squires; married his second wife at sixty and buried her

at eighty. Old 'Claret and Piquet,' they called him; had more children

under the rose than any man in Devonshire. I saw him playing half-crown

points the week before he died. It's in the blood. What's George's

weight?--ah, ha!”

“It's no laughing matter, Brandwhite. There's time for a hundred up

before dinner if you care for a game, Winlow?”

The sound of chairs drawn back, of footsteps, and the closing of a door.

George was alone again, a spot of red in either of his cheeks. Those

vague stirrings of chivalry and aspiration were gone, and gone that

sense of well-earned ease. He got up, came out of his corner, and walked

to and fro on the tiger-skin before the fire. He lit a cigarette, threw

it away, and lit another.

Skating on thin ice! That would not stop him! Their gossip would not

stop him, nor their sneers; they would but send him on the faster!

He threw away the second cigarette. It was strange for him to go to the

drawing-room at this hour of the day, but he went.

Opening the door quietly, he saw the long, pleasant room lighted with

tall oil-lamps, and Mrs. Bellew seated at the piano, singing. The

tea-things were still on a table at one end, but every one had finished.

As far away as might be, in the embrasure of the bay-window, General

Pendyce and Bee were playing chess. Grouped in the centre of the room,

by one of the lamps, Lady Malden, Mrs. Winlow, and Mrs. Brandwhite had

turned their faces towards the piano, and a sort of slight unwillingness

or surprise showed on those faces, a sort of “We were having a

most interesting talk; I don't think we ought to have been stopped”

expression.

Before the fire, with his long legs outstretched, stood Gerald Pendyce.

And a little apart, her dark eyes fixed on the singer, and a piece of

embroidery in her lap, sat Mrs. Pendyce, on the edge of whose skirt lay

Roy, the old Skye terrier.

“But had I wist, before I lost,

That love had been sae ill to win;

I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd

And pinn'd it with a siller pin....

O waly! waly! but love be bonny

A little time while it is new,

But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld,

And fades awa' like morning dew!”

This was the song George heard, trembling and dying to the chords of the

fine piano that was a little out of tune.

He gazed at the singer, and though he was not musical, there came a look

into his eyes that he quickly hid away.

A slight murmur occurred in the centre of the room, and from the

fireplace Gerald called out, “Thanks; that's rippin!”

The voice of General Pendyce rose in the bay-window: “Check!”

Mrs. Pendyce, taking up her embroidery, on which a tear had dropped,

said gently:

“Thank you, dear; most charming!”

Mrs. Bellew left the piano, and sat down beside her. George moved into

the bay-window. He knew nothing of chess-indeed, he could not stand the

game; but from here, without attracting attention, he could watch Mrs.

Bellew.

The air was drowsy and sweet-scented; a log of cedarwood had just been

put on the fire; the voices of his mother and Mrs. Bellew, talking of

what he could not hear, the voices of Lady Malden, Mrs. Brandwhite,

and Gerald, discussing some neighbours, of Mrs. Winlow dissenting or

assenting in turn, all mingled in a comfortable, sleepy sound, clipped

now and then by the voice of General Pendyce calling, “Check!” and of

Bee saying, “Oh, uncle!”

A feeling of rage rose in George. Why should they all be so comfortable

and cosy while this perpetual fire was burning in himself? And he

fastened his moody eyes on her who was keeping him thus dancing to her

pipes.

He made an awkward movement which shook the chess-table. The General

said behind him: “Look out, George! What--what!”

George went up to his mother.

“Let's have a look at that, Mother.”

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair and handed up her work with a

smile of pleased surprise.

“My dear boy, you won't understand it a bit. It's for the front of my

new frock.”

George took the piece of work. He did not understand it, but turning

and twisting it he could breathe the warmth of the woman he loved. In

bending over the embroidery he touched Mrs. Bellew's shoulder; it was

not drawn away, a faint pressure seemed to answer his own. His mother's

voice recalled him:

“Oh, my needle, dear! It's so sweet of you, but perhaps”

George handed back the embroidery. Mrs. Pendyce received it with a

grateful look. It was the first time he had ever shown an interest in

her work.

Mrs. Bellew had taken up a palm-leaf fan to screen her face from the

fire. She said slowly:

“If we win to-morrow I'll embroider you something, George.”

“And if we lose?”

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes, and involuntarily George moved so that his

mother could not see the sort of slow mesmerism that was in them.

“If we lose,” she said, “I shall sink into the earth. We must win,

George.”

He gave an uneasy little laugh, and glanced quickly at his mother. Mrs.

Pendyce had begun to draw her needle in and out with a half-startled

look on her face.

“That's a most haunting little song you sang, dear,” she said.

Mrs. Bellew answered: “The words are so true, aren't they?”

George felt her eyes on him, and tried to look at her, but those

half-smiling, half-threatening eyes seemed to twist and turn him about

as his hands had twisted and turned about his mother's embroidery. Again

across Mrs. Pendyce's face flitted that half-startled look.

Suddenly General Pendyce's voice was heard saying very loud, “Stale?

Nonsense, Bee, nonsense! Why, damme, so it is!”

A hum of voices from the centre of the room covered up that outburst,

and Gerald, stepping to the hearth, threw another cedar log upon the

fire. The smoke came out in a puff.

Mrs. Pendyce leaned back in her chair smiling, and wrinkling her fine,

thin nose.

“Delicious!” she said, but her eyes did not leave her son's face, and in

them was still that vague alarm.

CHAPTER IV

THE HAPPY HUNTING-GROUND

Of all the places where, by a judicious admixture of whip and spur,

oats and whisky, horses are caused to place one leg before another with

unnecessary rapidity, in order that men may exchange little pieces of

metal with the greater freedom, Newmarket Heath is “the topmost, and

merriest, and best.”

This museum of the state of flux--the secret reason of horse-racing

being to afford an example of perpetual motion (no proper racing-man

having ever been found to regard either gains or losses in the light of

an accomplished fact)--this museum of the state of flux has a climate

unrivalled for the production of the British temperament.

Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character,

east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the

wettest rain, of any place of its size in the “three kingdoms.” It

tends--in advance even of the City of London--to the nurture and

improvement of individualism, to that desirable “I'll see you d---d”

state of mind which is the proud objective of every Englishman, and

especially of every country gentleman. In a word--a mother to the

self-reliant secretiveness which defies intrusion and forms an integral

part in the Christianity of this country--Newmarket Heath is beyond all

others the happy hunting-ground of the landed classes.

In the Paddock half an hour before the Rutlandshire Handicap was to

be run numbers of racing-men were gathered in little knots of two and

three, describing to each other with every precaution the points of

strength in the horses they had laid against, the points of weakness

in the horses they had backed, or vice versa, together with the latest

discrepancies of their trainers and jockeys. At the far end George

Pendyce, his trainer Blacksmith, and his jockey Swells, were talking in

low tones. Many people have observed with surprise the close-buttoned

secrecy of all who have to do with horses. It is no matter for wonder.

The horse is one of those generous and somewhat careless animals that,

if not taken firmly from the first, will surely give itself away.

Essential to a man who has to do with horses is a complete closeness of

physiognomy, otherwise the animal will never know what is expected of

him. The more that is expected of him, the closer must be the expression

of his friends, or a grave fiasco may have to be deplored.

It was for these reasons that George's face wore more than its habitual

composure, and the faces of his trainer and his jockey were alert,

determined, and expressionless. Blacksmith, a little man, had in his

hand a short notched cane, with which, contrary to expectation, he did

not switch his legs. His eyelids drooped over his shrewd eyes, his upper

lip advanced over the lower, and he wore no hair on his face. The Jockey

Swells' pinched-up countenance, with jutting eyebrows and practically

no cheeks, had under George's racing-cap of “peacock blue” a subfusc hue

like that of old furniture.

The Ambler had been bought out of the stud of Colonel Dorking, a man

opposed on high grounds to the racing of two-year-olds, and at the age

of three had never run. Showing more than a suspicion of form in one or

two home trials, he ran a bye in the Fane Stakes, when obviously not up

to the mark, and was then withdrawn from the public gaze. The Stable had

from the start kept its eye on the Rutlandshire Handicap, and no

sooner was Goodwood over than the commission was placed in the hands of

Barney's, well known for their power to enlist at the most appropriate

moment the sympathy of the public in a horse's favour. Almost

coincidentally with the completion of the Stable Commission it was found

that the public were determined to support the Ambler at any price over

seven to one. Barney's at once proceeded judiciously to lay off the

Stable Money, and this having been done, George found that he stood to

win four thousand pounds to nothing. If he had now chosen to bet this

sum against the horse at the then current price of eight to one, it is

obvious that he could have made an absolute certainty of five hundred

pounds, and the horse need never even have started. But George, who

would have been glad enough of such a sum, was not the man to do this

sort of thing. It was against the tenets of his creed. He believed, too,

in his horse; and had enough of the Totteridge in him to like a race for

a race's sake. Even when beaten there was enjoyment to be had out of the

imperturbability with which he could take that beating, out of a sense

of superiority to men not quite so sportsmanlike as himself.

“Come and see the nag saddled,” he said to his brother Gerald.

In one of the long line of boxes the Ambler was awaiting his toilette,

a dark-brown horse, about sixteen hands, with well-placed shoulders,

straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-tail. But of

all his features, the most remarkable was his eye. In the depths of

that full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and when he turned

it, half-circled by a moon of white, and gave bystanders that look of

strange comprehension, they felt that he saw to the bottom of all this

that was going on around him. He was still but three years old, and

had not yet attained the age when people apply to action the fruits of

understanding; yet there was little doubt that as he advanced in years

he would manifest his disapproval of a system whereby men made money

at his expense. And with that eye half-circled by the moon he looked at

George, and in silence George looked back at him, strangely baffled by

the horse's long, soft, wild gaze. On this heart beating deep within its

warm, dark satin sheath, on the spirit gazing through that soft, wild

eye, too much was hanging, and he turned away.

“Mount, jockeys!”

Through the crowd of hard-looking, hatted, muffled, two-legged men,

those four-legged creatures in their chestnut, bay, and brown, and

satin nakedness, most beautiful in all the world, filed proudly past,

as though going forth to death. The last vanished through the gate, the

crowd dispersed.

Down by the rails of Tattersall's George stood alone. He had screwed

himself into a corner, whence he could watch through his long glasses

that gay-coloured, shifting wheel at the end of the mile and more of

turf. At this moment, so pregnant with the future, he could not bear the

company of his fellows.

“They're off!”

He looked no longer, but hunched his shoulders, holding his elbows

stiff, that none might see what he was feeling. Behind him a man said:

“The favourite's beat. What's that in blue on the rails?”

Out by himself on the far rails, out by himself, sweeping along like a

home-coming bird, was the Ambler. And George's heart leaped, as a fish

leaps of a summer evening out of a dark pool.

“They'll never catch him. The Ambler wins! It's a walk-over! The

Ambler!”

Silent amidst the shouting throng, George thought: 'My horse! my horse!'

and tears of pure emotion sprang into his eyes. For a full minute he

stood quite still; then, instinctively adjusting hat and tie, made his

way calmly to the Paddock. He left it to his trainer to lead the Ambler

back, and joined him at the weighing-room.

The little jockey was seated, nursing his saddle, negligent and

saturnine, awaiting the words “All right.”

Blacksmith said quietly:

“Well, sir, we've pulled it off. Four lengths. I've told Swells he does

no more riding for me. There's a gold-mine given away. What on earth was

he about to come in by himself like that? We shan't get into the 'City'

now under nine stone. It's enough to make a man cry!”

And, looking at his trainer, George saw the little man's lips quiver.

In his stall, streaked with sweat, his hind-legs outstretched, fretting

under the ministrations of the groom, the Ambler stayed the whisking

of his head to look at his owner, and once more George met that

long, proud, soft glance. He laid his gloved hand on the horse's

lather-flecked neck. The Ambler tossed his head and turned it away.

George came out into the open, and made his way towards the Stand. His

trainer's words had instilled a drop of poison into his cup. “A goldmine

given away!”

He went up to Swells. On his lips were the words: “What made you give

the show away like that?” He did not speak them, for in his soul he felt

it would not become him to ask his jockey why he had not dissembled and

won by a length. But the little jockey understood at once.

“Mr. Blacksmith's been at me, sir. You take my tip: he's a queer one,

that 'orse. I thought it best to let him run his own race. Mark my

words, he knows what's what. When they're like that, they're best let

alone.”

A voice behind him said:

“Well, George, congratulate you! Not the way I should have ridden the

race myself. He should have lain off to the distance. Remarkable turn of

speed that horse. There's no riding nowadays!”

The Squire and General Pendyce were standing there. Erect and slim,

unlike and yet so very much alike, the eyes of both of them seemed

saying:

'. shall differ from you; there are no two opinions about it. I shall

differ from you!'

Behind them stood Mrs. Bellew. Her eyes could not keep still under their

lashes, and their light and colour changed continually. George walked on

slowly at her side. There was a look of triumph and softness about her;

the colour kept deepening in her cheeks, her figure swayed. They did not

look at each other.

Against the Paddock railings stood a man in riding-clothes, of spare

figure, with a horseman's square, high shoulders, and thin long legs a

trifle bowed. His narrow, thin-lipped, freckled face, with close-cropped

sandy hair and clipped red moustache, was of a strange dead pallor.

He followed the figures of George and his companion with little fiery

dark-brown eyes, in which devils seemed to dance. Someone tapped him on

the arm.

“Hallo, Bellew! had a good race?”

“Devil take you, no! Come and have a drink?”

Still without looking at each other, George and Mrs. Bellew walked

towards the gate.

“I don't want to see any more,” she said. “I should like to get away at

once.”

“We'll go after this race,” said George. “There's nothing running in the

last.”

At the back of the Grand Stand, in the midst of all the hurrying crowd,

he stopped.

“Helen?” he said.

Mrs. Bellew raised her eyes and looked full into his.

Long and cross-country is the drive from Royston Railway Station to

Worsted Skeynes. To George Pendyce, driving the dog cart, with Helen

Bellew beside him, it seemed but a minute--that strange minute when the

heaven is opened and a vision shows between. To some men that vision

comes but once, to some men many times. It comes after long winter, when

the blossom hangs; it comes after parched summer, when the leaves are

going gold; and of what hues it is painted--of frost-white and fire, of

wine and purple, of mountain flowers, or the shadowy green of still deep

pools--the seer alone can tell. But this is certain--the vision steals

from him who looks on it all images of other things, all sense of law,

of order, of the living past, and the living present. It is the future,

fair-scented, singing, jewelled, as when suddenly between high banks a

bough of apple-blossom hangs quivering in the wind loud with the song of

bees.

George Pendyce gazed before him at this vision over the grey mare's

back, and she who sat beside him muffled in her fur was touching his arm

with hers. And back to them the second groom, hugging himself above the

road that slipped away beneath, saw another kind of vision, for he

had won five pounds, and his eyes were closed. And the grey mare saw a

vision of her warm light stall, and the oats dropping between her manger

bars, and fled with light hoofs along the lanes where the side-lamps

shot two moving gleams over dark beech-hedges that rustled crisply in

the northeast wind. Again and again she sneezed in the pleasure of that

homeward flight, and the light foam of her nostrils flicked the faces

of those behind. And they sat silent, thrilling at the touch of each

other's arms, their cheeks glowing in the windy darkness, their eyes

shining and fixed before them.

The second groom awoke suddenly from his dream.

“If I owned that 'orse, like Mr. George, and had such a topper as this

'.re Mrs. Bellew beside me, would I be sittin' there without a word?”

CHAPTER V

MRS. PENDYCE'S DANCE

Mrs. Pendyce believed in the practice of assembling county society for

the purpose of inducing it to dance, a hardy enterprise in a county

where the souls, and incidentally the feet, of the inhabitants were

shaped for more solid pursuits. Men were her chief difficulty, for in

spite of really national discouragement, it was rare to find a girl who

was not “fond of dancing.”

“Ah, dancing; I did so love it! Oh, poor Cecil Tharp!” And with a queer

little smile she pointed to a strapping red-faced youth dancing with her

daughter. “He nearly trips Bee up every minute, and he hugs her so, as

if he were afraid of falling on his head. Oh, dear, what a bump! It's

lucky she's so nice and solid. I like to see the dear boy. Here come

George and Helen Bellew. Poor George is not quite up to her form, but

he's better than most of them. Doesn't she look lovely this evening?”

Lady Malden raised her glasses to her eyes by the aid of a

tortoise-shell handle.

“Yes, but she's one of those women you never can look at without seeing

that she has a--a--body. She's too-too--d'you see what I mean? It's

almost--almost like a Frenchwoman!”

Mrs. Bellew had passed so close that the skirt of her seagreen dress

brushed their feet with a swish, and a scent as of a flower-bed was

wafted from it. Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her nose.

“Much nicer. Her figure's so delicious,” she said.

Lady Malden pondered.

“She's a dangerous woman. James quite agrees with me.”

Mrs. Pendyce raised her eyebrows; there was a touch of scorn in that

gentle gesture.

“She's a very distant cousin of mine,” she said. “Her father was quite a

wonderful man. It's an old Devonshire family. The Cheritons of Bovey are

mentioned in Twisdom. I like young people to enjoy themselves.”

A smile illumined softly the fine wrinkles round her eyes. Beneath

her lavender satin bodice, with strips of black velvet banding it at

intervals, her heart was beating faster than usual. She was thinking

of a night in her youth, when her old playfellow, young Trefane of the

Blues, danced with her nearly all the evening, and of how at her window

she saw the sun rise, and gently wept because she was married to Horace

Pendyce.

“I always feel sorry for a woman who can dance as she does. I should

have liked to have got some men from town, but Horace will only have

the county people. It's not fair to the girls. It isn't so much

their dancing, as their conversation--all about the first meet,

and yesterday's cubbing, and to-morrow's covert-shooting, and their

fox-terriers (though I'm awfully fond of the dear dogs), and then that

new golf course. Really, it's quite distressing to me at times.” Again

Mrs. Pendyce looked out into the room with her patient smile, and two

little lines of wrinkles formed across her forehead between the regular

arching of her eyebrows that were still dark-brown. “They don't seem

able to be gay. I feel they don't really care about it. They're only

just waiting till to-morrow morning, so that they can go out and kill

something. Even Bee's like that!”

Mrs. Pendyce was not exaggerating. The guests at Worsted Skeynes on the

night of the Rutlandshire Handicap were nearly all county people, from

the Hon. Gertrude Winlow, revolving like a faintly coloured statue, to

young Tharp, with his clean face and his fair bullety head, who danced

as though he were riding at a bullfinch. In a niche old Lord Quarryman,

the Master of the Gaddesdon, could be discerned in conversation with Sir

James Malden and the Reverend Hussell Barter.

Mrs. Pendyce said:

“Your husband and Lord Quarryman are talking of poachers; I can tell

that by the look of their hands. I can't help sympathising a little with

poachers.”

Lady Malden dropped her eyeglasses.

“James takes a very just view of them,” she said. “It's such an

insidious offence. The more insidious the offence the more important

it is to check it. It seems hard to punish people for stealing bread or

turnips, though one must, of course; but I've no sympathy with poachers.

So many of them do it for sheer love of sport!”

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

“That's Captain Maydew dancing with her now. He is a good dancer.

Don't their steps fit? Don't they look happy? I do like people to enjoy

themselves! There is such a dreadful lot of unnecessary sadness and

suffering in the world. I think it's really all because people won't

make allowances for each other.”

Lady Malden looked at her sideways, pursing her lips; but Mrs. Pendyce,

by race a Totteridge, continued to smile. She had been born unconscious

of her neighbours' scrutinies.

“Helen Bellew,” she said, “was such a lovely girl. Her grandfather was

my mother's cousin. What does that make her? Anyway, my cousin, Gregory

Vigil, is her first cousin once removed--the Hampshire Vigils. Do you

know him?”

Lady Malden answered:

“Gregory Vigil? The man with a lot of greyish hair? I've had to do with

him in the S.R.W.C.”

But Mrs. Pendyce was dancing mentally.

“Such a good fellow! What is that--the----?”

Lady Malden gave her a sharp look.

“Society for the Rescue of Women and Children, of course. Surely you

know about that?”

Mrs. Pendyce continued to smile.

“Ah, yes, that is nice! What a beautiful figure she has! It's so

refreshing. I envy a woman with a figure like that; it looks as if it

would never grow old. 'Society for the Regeneration of Women'. Gregory's

so good about that sort of thing. But he never seems quite successful,

have you noticed? There was a woman he was very interested in this

spring. I think she drank.”

“They all do,” said Lady Malden; “it's the curse of the day.”

Mrs. Pendyce wrinkled her forehead.

“Most of the Totteridges,” she said, “were great drinkers. They ruined

their constitutions. Do you know Jaspar Bellew?”

“No.”

“It's such a pity he drinks. He came to dinner here once, and I'm afraid

he must have come intoxicated. He took me in; his little eyes quite

burned me up. He drove his dog cart into a ditch on the way home. That

sort of thing gets about so. It's such a pity. He's quite interesting.

Horace can't stand him.”

The music of the waltz had ceased. Lady Malden put her glasses to her

eyes. From close beside them George and Mrs. Bellew passed by. They

moved on out of hearing, but the breeze of her fan had touched the

arching hair on Lady Malden's forehead, the down on her upper lip.

“Why isn't she with her husband?” she asked abruptly.

Mrs. Pendyce lifted her brows.

“Do you concern yourself to ask that which a well-bred woman leaves

unanswered?” she seemed to say, and a flush coloured her cheeks.

Lady Malden winced, but, as though it were forced through her mouth by

some explosion in her soul, she said:

“You have only to look and see how dangerous she is!”

The colour in Mrs. Pendyce's cheeks deepened to a blush like a girl's.

“Every man,” she said, “is in love with Helen Bellew. She's so

tremendously alive. My cousin Gregory has been in love with her for

years, though he is her guardian or trustee, or whatever they call them

now. It's quite romantic. If I were a man I should be in love with her

myself.” The flush vanished and left her cheeks to their true colour,

that of a faded rose.

Once more she was listening to the voice of young Trefane, “Ah, Margery,

I love you!”--to her own half whispered answer, “Poor boy!” Once more

she was looking back through that forest of her life where she had

wandered so long, and where every tree was Horace Pendyce.

“What a pity one can't always be young!” she said.

Through the conservatory door, wide open to the lawn, a full moon

flooded the country with pale gold light, and in that light the branches

of the cedar-trees seemed printed black on the grey-blue paper of the

sky; all was cold, still witchery out there, and not very far away an

owl was hooting.

The Reverend Husell Barter, about to enter the conservatory for a breath

of air, was arrested by the sight of a couple half-hidden by a bushy

plant; side by side they were looking at the moonlight, and he knew

them for Mrs. Bellew and George Pendyce. Before he could either enter or

retire, he saw George seize her in his arms. She seemed to bend her head

back, then bring her face to his. The moonlight fell on it, and on the

full, white curve of her neck. The Rector of Worsted Skeynes saw, too,

that her eyes were closed, her lips parted.

CHAPTER VI

INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER

Along the walls of the smoking-room, above a leather dado, were prints

of horsemen in night-shirts and nightcaps, or horsemen in red coats and

top-hats, with words underneath such as:

“'Yeoicks' says Thruster; 'Yeoicks' says Dick. 'My word! these d---d

Quornites shall now see the trick!'.

Two pairs of antlers surmounted the hearth, mementoes of Mr. Pendyce's

deer-forest, Strathbegally, now given up, where, with the assistance

of his dear old gillie Angus McBane, he had secured the heads of these

monarchs of the glen. Between them was the print of a personage in

trousers, with a rifle under his arm and a smile on his lips, while two

large deerhounds worried a dying stag, and a lady approached him on a

pony.

The Squire and Sir James Malden had retired; the remaining guests were

seated round the fire. Gerald Pendyce stood at a side-table, on which

was a tray of decanters, glasses, and mineral water.

“Who's for a dhrop of the craythur? A wee dhrop of the craythur? Rector,

a dhrop of the craythur? George, a dhrop--”

George shook his head. A smile was on his lips, and that smile had in

it a quality of remoteness, as though it belonged to another sphere, and

had strayed on to the lips of this man of the world against his will. He

seemed trying to conquer it, to twist his face into its habitual shape,

but, like the spirit of a strange force, the smile broke through. It had

mastered him, his thoughts, his habits, and his creed; he was stripped

of fashion, as on a thirsty noon a man stands stripped for a cool plunge

from which he hardly cares if he come up again.

And this smile, not by intrinsic merit, but by virtue of its

strangeness, attracted the eye of each man in the room; so, in a crowd,

the most foreign-looking face will draw all glances.

The Reverend Husell Barter with a frown watched that smile, and strange

thoughts chased through his mind.

“Uncle Charles, a dhrop of the craythur a wee dhrop of the craythur?”

General Pendyce caressed his whisker.

“The least touch,” he said, “the least touch! I hear that our friend Sir

Percival is going to stand again.”

Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.

“Outrageous!” he said. “He ought to be told at once that we can't have

him.”

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair:

“If he puts up, he'll get in; they can't afford to lose him.” And with a

leisurely puff of smoke: “I must say, sir, I don't quite see what it has

to do with his public life.”

Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.

“An impenitent man,” he said.

“But a woman like that! What chance has a fellow if she once gets hold

of him?”

“When I was stationed at Halifax,” began General Pendyce, “she was the

belle of the place---”

Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.

“Don't let's talk of her---the jade!” Then suddenly to George: “Let's

hear your opinion, George. Dreaming of your victories, eh?” And the tone

of his voice was peculiar.

But George got up.

“I'm too sleepy,” he said; “good-night.” Curtly nodding, he left the

room.

Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver

candlesticks; a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold path

in the velvet blackness. George lighted his candle, and a second gold

path leaped out in front; up this he began to ascend. He carried his

candle at the level of his breast, and the light shone sideways and up

over his white shirt-front and the comely, bulldog face above it. It

shone, too, into his eyes, 'grey and slightly bloodshot, as though their

surfaces concealed passions violently struggling for expression. At

the turning platform of the stair he paused. In darkness above and in

darkness below the country house was still; all the little life of its

day, its petty sounds, movements, comings, goings, its very breathing,

seemed to have fallen into sleep. The forces of its life had gathered

into that pool of light where George stood listening. The beating of his

heart was the only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this

great slumbering space. He stood there long, motionless, listening to

the beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance. Then floating

up through the darkness came the echo of a laugh. George started. “The

d----d parson!” he muttered, and turned up the stairs again; but now he

moved like a man with a purpose, and held his candle high so that the

light fell far out into the darkness. He went beyond his own room, and

stood still again. The light of the candle showed the blood flushing his

forehead, beating and pulsing in the veins at the side of his temples;

showed, too, his lips quivering, his shaking hand. He stretched out that

hand and touched the handle of a door, then stood again like a man of

stone, listening for the laugh. He raised the candle, and it shone

into every nook; his throat clicked, as though he found it hard to

swallow....

It was at Barnard Scrolls, the next station to Worsted Skeynes, on the

following afternoon, that a young man entered a first-class compartment

of the 3.10 train to town. The young man wore a Newmarket coat, natty

white gloves, and carried an eyeglass. His face was well coloured, his

chestnut moustache well brushed, and his blue eyes with their loving

expression seemed to say, “Look at me--come, look at me--can anyone

be better fed?” His valise and hat-box, of the best leather, bore the

inscription, “E. Maydew, 8th Lancers.”

There was a lady leaning back in a corner, wrapped to the chin in a fur

garment, and the young man, encountering through his eyeglass her cool,

ironical glance, dropped it and held out his hand.

“Ah, Mrs. Bellew, great pleasure t'see you again so soon. You goin' up

to town? Jolly dance last night, wasn't it? Dear old sort, the Squire,

and Mrs. Pendyce such an awf'ly nice woman.”

Mrs. Bellew took his hand, and leaned back again in her corner. She was

rather paler than usual, but it became her, and Captain Maydew thought

he had never seen so charming a creature.

“Got a week's leave, thank goodness. Most awf'ly slow time of year.

Cubbin's pretty well over, an' we don't open till the first.”

He turned to the window. There in the sunlight the hedgerows ran golden

and brown away from the clouds of trailing train smoke. Young Maydew

shook his head at their beauty.

“The country's still very blind,” he said. “Awful pity you've given up

your huntin'.”

Mrs. Bellew did not trouble to answer, and it was just that certainty

over herself, the cool assurance of a woman who has known the world, her

calm, almost negligent eyes, that fascinated this young man. He looked

at her quite shyly.

'. suppose you will become my slave,' those eyes seemed to say, 'but I

can't help you, really.'

“Did you back George's horse? I had an awf'ly good race. I was at school

with George. Charmin' fellow, old George.”

In Mrs. Bellew's eyes something seemed to stir down in the depths, but

young Maydew was looking at his glove. The handle of the carriage had

left a mark that saddened him.

“You know him well, I suppose, old George?”

“Very well.”

“Some fellows, if they have a good thing, keep it so jolly dark. You

fond of racin', Mrs. Bellew?”

“Passionately.”

“So am I.” And his eyes continued, 'It's ripping to like what you like,'

for, hypnotised, they could not tear themselves away from that creamy

face, with its full lips and the clear, faintly smiling eyes above the

high collar of white fur.

At the terminus his services were refused, and rather crestfallen, with

his hat raised, he watched her walk away. But soon, in his cab, his face

regained its normal look, his eyes seemed saying to the little mirror,

'.ook at me come, look at me--can anyone be better fed?'

CHAPTER VII

SABBATH AT WORSTED SKEYNES

In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce sat

with an opened letter in her lap. It was her practice to sit there on

Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room adjoining to

put on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do

nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look

over the home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising

among a group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those

times, unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with

her hands in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's

entrance and his “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” She had sat there till

her hair, once dark-brown, was turning grey; she would sit there until

it was white. One day she would sit there no longer, and, as likely as

not, Mr. Pendyce, still well preserved, would enter and say, “Now, my

dear, you'll be late!” having for the moment forgotten.

But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same

thing was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the “three

kingdoms,” and women were sitting waiting for their hair to turn white,

who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church, had parted with

their imaginations and all the changes and chances of this mortal life.

Round her chair “the dear dogs” lay--this was their practice too, and

now and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would put out a long

tongue and lick her little pointed shoe. For Mrs. Pendyce had been a

pretty woman, and her feet were as small as ever.

Beside her on a spindley table stood a china bowl filled with dried

rose-leaves, whereon had been scattered an essence smelling like

sweetbriar, whose secret she had learned from her mother in the old

Warwickshire home of the Totteridges, long since sold to Mr. Abraham

Brightman. Mrs. Pendyce, born in the year 1840, loved sweet perfumes,

and was not ashamed of using them.

The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and bright

were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap. She turned

it over and began to read again. A wrinkle visited her brow. It was not

often that a letter demanding decision or involving responsibility came

to her hands past the kind and just censorship of Horace Pendyce. Many

matters were under her control, but were not, so to speak, connected

with the outer world. Thus ran the letter:

“S.R.W.C., HANOVER SQUARE,

“November 1, 1891.

“DEAR MARGERY,

“I want to see you and talk something over, so I'm running down on

Sunday afternoon. There is a train of sorts. Any loft will do for me to

sleep in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at this time of

year. On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to see you about.

You know, of course, that since her father died I am Helen Bellew's

only guardian. Her present position is one in which no woman should be

placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end to. That man Bellew

deserves no consideration. I cannot write of him coolly, so I won't

write at all. It is two years now since they separated, entirely, as

I consider, through his fault. The law has placed her in a cruel and

helpless position all this time; but now, thank God, I believe we can

move for a divorce. You know me well enough to realise what I have gone

through before coming to this conclusion. Heaven knows if I could hit on

some other way in which her future could be safeguarded, I would take

it in preference to this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot. You

are the only woman I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must

see Bellew. Let not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be

disturbed on my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.

“Affectionately your cousin,

“GREGORY VIGIL.”

Mrs. Pendyce smiled. She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording

of the last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it

a welcome; so smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the

letter. Her thoughts wandered. The last scandal--Lady Rose Bethany's

divorce--had upset the whole county, and even now one had to be careful

what one said. Horace would not like the idea of another divorce-suit,

and that so close to Worsted Skeynes. When Helen left on Thursday he had

said:

“I'm not sorry she's gone. Her position is a queer one. People don't

like it. The Maldens were quite----”

And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had broken

in:

“Ellen Malden is too bourgeoise for anything!”

Nor had Mr. Pendyce's look of displeasure effaced the comfort of that

word.

Poor Horace! The children took after him, except George, who took

after her brother Hubert. The dear boy had gone back to his club on

Friday--the day after Helen and the others went. She wished he could

have stayed. She wished----The wrinkle deepened on her brow. Too much

London was bad for him! Too much----Her fancy flew to the London which

she saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for the sake of the

girls, just when her garden was at its best, and when really things were

such a whirl that she never knew whether she was asleep or awake. It was

not like London at all--not like that London under spring skies, or in

early winter lamplight, where all the passers-by seemed so interesting,

living all sorts of strange and eager lives, with strange and eager

pleasures, running all sorts of risks, hungry sometimes, homeless

even--so fascinating, so unlike--

“Now, my dear, you'll be late!”

Mr. Pendyce, in his Norfolk jacket, which he was on his way to change

for a black coat, passed through the room, followed by the spaniel John.

He turned at the door, and the spaniel John turned too.

“I hope to goodness Barter'll be short this morning. I want to talk to

old Fox about that new chaff-cutter.”

Round their mistress the three terriers raised their heads; the aged

Skye gave forth a gentle growl. Mrs. Pendyce leaned over and stroked his

nose.

“Roy, Roy, how can you, dear?”

Mr. Pendyce said:

“The old dog's losing all his teeth; he'll have to be put away.”

His wife flushed painfully.

“Oh no, Horace--oh no!”

The Squire coughed.

“We must think of the dog!” he said.

Mrs. Pendyce rose, and crumpling the letter nervously, followed him from

the room.

A narrow path led through the home paddock towards the church, and along

it the household were making their way. The maids in feathers hurried

along guiltily by twos and threes; the butler followed slowly by

himself. A footman and a groom came next, leaving trails of pomatum in

the air. Presently General Pendyce, in a high square-topped bowler hat,

carrying a malacca cane, and Prayer-Book, appeared walking between Bee

and Norah, also carrying Prayer-Books, with fox-terriers by their sides.

Lastly, the Squire in a high hat, six or seven paces in advance of his

wife, in a small velvet toque.

The rooks had ceased their wheeling and their cawing; the five-minutes

bell, with its jerky, toneless tolling, alone broke the Sunday hush.

An old horse, not yet taken up from grass, stood motionless, resting

a hind-leg, with his face turned towards the footpath. Within the

churchyard wicket the Rector, firm and square, a low-crowned hat tilted

up on his bald forehead, was talking to a deaf old cottager. He raised

his hat and nodded to the ladies; then, leaving his remark unfinished,

disappeared within the vestry. At the organ Mrs. Barter was drawing

out stops in readiness to play her husband into church, and her eyes,

half-shining and half-anxious, were fixed intently on the vestry door.

The Squire and Mrs. Pendyce, now almost abreast, came down the aisle and

took their seats beside their daughters and the General in the first

pew on the left. It was high and cushioned. They knelt down on tall red

hassocks. Mrs. Pendyce remained over a minute buried in thought; Mr.

Pendyce rose sooner, and looking down, kicked the hassock that had been

put too near the seat. Fixing his glasses on his nose, he consulted a

worn old Bible, then rising, walked to the lectern and began to find

the Lessons. The bell ceased; a wheezing, growling noise was heard. Mrs.

Barter had begun to play; the Rector, in a white surplice, was coming

in. Mr. Pendyce, with his back turned, continued to find the Lessons.

The service began.

Through a plain glass window high up in the right-hand aisle the sun

shot a gleam athwart the Pendyces' pew. It found its last resting-place

on Mrs. Barter's face, showing her soft crumpled cheeks painfully

flushed, the lines on her forehead, and those shining eyes, eager and

anxious, travelling ever from her husband to her music and back again.

At the least fold or frown on his face the music seemed to quiver, as to

some spasm in the player's soul. In the Pendyces' pew the two girls sang

loudly and with a certain sweetness. Mr. Pendyce, too, sang, and once or

twice he looked in surprise at his brother, as though he were not making

a creditable noise.

Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed the

millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting sunbeam.

Its gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic, vanished. Mrs.

Pendyce let her eyes fall. Something had fled from her soul with the

sunbeam; her lips moved no more.

The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the Psalms

ceased. He left his seat, and placing his hands on the lectern's sides,

leaned forward and began to read the Lesson. He read the story of

Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and how they could

not dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the sound of his own

voice, he was thinking:

'.his Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce. I am Horace

Pendyce--Horace Pendyce. Amen, Horace Pendyce!'

And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon him,

for this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring came again,

she would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's Hotel, where she

had always stayed with her father when a girl. George had promised to

look after her, and take her round the theatres. And forgetting that she

had thought this every autumn for the last ten years, she gently smiled

and nodded. Mr. Pendyce said:

“'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man

can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of

it; for I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent, and came

and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an

altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the first Lesson.”

The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway athwart

the church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the service

went on.

There came a hush. The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground

outside, poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the

fox-terriers, seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears. A voice

speaking on one note broke the hush. The spaniel John sighed, the

fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against each

other. The Rector had begun to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and

in the first right-hand pew six of his children at once began to fidget.

Mrs. Barter, sideways and unsupported on her seat, kept her starry eyes

fixed on his cheek; a line of perplexity furrowed her brow. Now and

again she moved as though her back ached. The Rector quartered his

congregation with his gaze, lest any amongst them should incline to

sleep. He spoke in a loud-sounding voice.

God-he said-wished men to be fruitful, intended them to be fruitful,

commanded them to be fruitful. God--he said--made men, and made the

earth; He made man to be fruitful in the earth; He made man neither to

question nor answer nor argue; He made him to be fruitful and possess

the land. As they had heard in that beautiful Lesson this morning,

God had set bounds, the bounds of marriage, within which man should

multiply; within those bounds it was his duty to multiply, and that

exceedingly--even as Abraham multiplied. In these days dangers,

pitfalls, snares, were rife; in these days men went about and openly,

unashamedly advocated shameful doctrines. Let them beware. It would be

his sacred duty to exclude such men from within the precincts of that

parish entrusted to his care by God. In the language of their greatest

poet, “Such men were dangerous”--dangerous to Christianity, dangerous

to their country, and to national life. They were not brought into this

world to follow sinful inclination, to obey their mortal reason. God

demanded sacrifices of men. Patriotism demanded sacrifices of men,

it demanded that they should curb their inclinations and desires. It

demanded of them their first duty as men and Christians, the duty of

being fruitful and multiplying, in order that they might till this

fruitful earth, not selfishly, not for themselves alone. It demanded of

them the duty of multiplying in order that they and their children might

be equipped to smite the enemies of their Queen and country, and uphold

the name of England in whatever quarrel, against all who rashly sought

to drag her flag in the dust.

The Squire opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Folding his arms,

he coughed, for he was thinking of the chaff-cutter. Beside him Mrs.

Pendyce, with her eyes on the altar, smiled as if in sleep. She was

thinking, 'Skyward's in Bond Street used to have lovely lace. Perhaps in

the spring I could----Or there was Goblin's, their Point de Venise----'

Behind them, four rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a

girl, sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face. She never

moved, her eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's lips,

her whole being seemed hanging on his words. It is true her dim eyes saw

nothing but a blur, her poor deaf ears could not hear one word, but she

sat at the angle she was used to, and thought of nothing at all. And

perhaps it was better so, for she was near her end.

Outside the churchyard, in the sun-warmed grass, the fox-terriers lay

one against the other, pretending to shiver, with their small bright

eyes fixed on the church door, and the rubbery nostrils of the spaniel

John worked ever busily beneath the wicket gate.

CHAPTER VIII

GREGORY VIGIL PROPOSES

About three o'clock that afternoon a tall man walked up the avenue at

Worsted Skeynes, in one hand carrying his hat, in the other a small

brown bag. He stopped now and then, and took deep breaths, expanding

the nostrils of his straight nose. He had a fine head, with wings of

grizzled hair. His clothes were loose, his stride was springy. Standing

in the middle of the drive, taking those long breaths, with his moist

blue eyes upon the sky, he excited the attention of a robin, who ran

out of a rhododendron to see, and when he had passed began to whistle.

Gregory Vigil turned, and screwed up his humorous lips, and, except that

he was completely lacking in embonpoint, he had a certain resemblance to

this bird, which is supposed to be peculiarly British.

He asked for Mrs. Pendyce in a high, light voice, very pleasant to the

ear, and was at once shown to the white morning-room.

She greeted him affectionately, like many women who have grown used to

hearing from their husbands the formula “Oh! your people!”--she had a

strong feeling for her kith and kin.

“You know, Grig,” she said, when her cousin was seated, “your letter was

rather disturbing. Her separation from Captain Bellew has caused such

a lot of talk about here. Yes; it's very common, I know, that sort of

thing, but Horace is so----! All the squires and parsons and county

people we get about here are just the same. Of course, I'm very fond of

her, she's so charming to look at; but, Gregory, I really don't dislike

her husband. He's a desperate sort of person--I think that's rather,

refreshing; and you know I do think she's a little like him in that!”

The blood rushed up into Gregory Vigil's forehead; he put his hand to

his head, and said:

“Like him? Like that man? Is a rose like an artichoke?”

Mrs. Pendyce went on:

“I enjoyed having her here immensely. It's the first time she's been

here since she left the Firs. How long is that? Two years? But you know,

Grig, the Maldens were quite upset about her. Do you think a divorce is

really necessary?”

Gregory Vigil answered: “I'm afraid it is.”

Mrs. Pendyce met her cousin's gaze serenely; if anything, her brows were

uplifted more than usual; but, as at the stirring of secret trouble, her

fingers began to twine and twist. Before her rose a vision of George

and Mrs. Bellew side by side. It was a vague maternal feeling, an

instinctive fear. She stilled her fingers, let her eyelids droop, and

said:

“Of course, dear Grig, if I can help you in any way--Horace does so

dislike anything to do with the papers.”

Gregory Vigil drew in his breath.

“The papers!” he said. “How hateful it is! To think that our

civilisation should allow women to be cast to the dogs! Understand,

Margery, I'm thinking of her. In this matter I'm not capable of

considering anything else.”

Mrs. Pendyce murmured: “Of course, dear Grig, I quite understand.”

“Her position is odious; a woman should not have to live like that,

exposed to everyone's foul gossip.”

“But, dear Grig, I don't think she minds; she seemed to me in such

excellent spirits.”

Gregory ran his fingers through his hair.

“Nobody understands her,” he said; “she's so plucky!”

Mrs. Pendyce stole a glance at him, and a little ironical smile

flickered over her face.

“No one can look at her without seeing her spirit. But, Grig, perhaps

you don't quite understand her either!”

Gregory Vigil put his hand to his head.

“I must open the window a moment,” he said.

Again Mrs. Pendyce's fingers began twisting, again she stilled them.

“We were quite a large party last week, and now there's only Charles.

Even George has gone back; he'll be so sorry to have missed you!”

Gregory neither turned nor answered, and a wistful look came into Mrs.

Pendyce's face.

“It was so nice for the dear boy to win that race! I'm afraid he bets

rather! It's such a comfort Horace doesn't know.”

Still Gregory did not speak.

Mrs. Pendyce's face lost its anxious look, and gained a sort of gentle

admiration.

“Dear Grig,” she said, “where do you go about your hair? It is so nice

and long and wavy!”

Gregory turned with a blush.

“I've been wanting to get it cut for ages. Do you really mean, Margery,

that your husband can't realise the position she's placed in?”

Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her lap.

“You see, Grig,” she began, “she was here a good deal before she left

the Firs, and, of course, she's related to me--though it's very distant.

With those horrid cases, you never know what will happen. Horace is

certain to say that she ought to go back to her husband; or, if that's

impossible, he'll say she ought to think of Society. Lady Rose Bethany's

case has shaken everybody, and Horace is nervous. I don't know how it

is, there's a great feeling amongst people about here against women

asserting themselves. You should hear Mr. Barter and Sir James Malden,

and dozens of others; the funny thing is that the women take their side.

Of course, it seems odd to me, because so many of the Totteridges ran

away, or did something funny. I can't help sympathising with her, but I

have to think of--of----In the country, you don't know how things that

people do get about before they've done them! There's only that and

hunting to talk of.”

Gregory Vigil clutched at his head.

“Well, if this is what chivalry has come to, thank God I'm not a

squire!”

Mrs. Pendyce's eyes flickered.

“Ah!” she said, “I've thought like that so often.”

Gregory broke the silence.

“I can't help the customs of the country. My duty's plain. There's

nobody else to look after her.”

Mrs. Pendyce sighed, and, rising from her chair, said: “Very well, dear

Grig; do let us go and have some tea.”

Tea at Worsted Skeynes was served in the hall on Sundays, and was

usually attended by the Rector and his wife. Young Cecil Tharp had

walked over with his dog, which could be heard whimpering faintly

outside the front-door.

General Pendyce, with his knees crossed and the tips of his fingers

pressed together, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall.

The Squire, who held his latest bird's-egg in his hand, was showing its

spots to the Rector.

In a corner by a harmonium, on which no one ever played, Norah talked of

the village hockey club to Mrs. Barter, who sat with her eyes fixed on

her husband. On the other side of the fire Bee and young Tharp, whose

chairs seemed very close together, spoke of their horses in low tones,

stealing shy glances at each other. The light was failing, the wood logs

crackled, and now and then over the cosy hum of talk there fell short,

drowsy silences--silences of sheer warmth and comfort, like the silence

of the spaniel John asleep against his master's boot.

“Well,” said Gregory softly, “I must go and see this man.”

“Is it really necessary, Grig, to see him at all? I mean--if you've made

up your mind----”

Gregory ran his hand through his hair.

“It's only fair, I think!” And crossing the hall, he let himself out so

quietly that no one but Mrs. Pendyce noticed he had gone.

An hour and a half later, near the railway-station, on the road from the

village back to Worsted Skeynes, Mr. Pendyce and his daughter Bee were

returning from their Sunday visit to their old butler, Bigson. The

Squire was talking.

“He's failing, Bee-dear old Bigson's failing. I can't hear what he

says, he mumbles so; and he forgets. Fancy his forgetting that I was at

Oxford. But we don't get servants like him nowadays. That chap we've got

now is a sleepy fellow. Sleepy! he's----What's that in the road? They've

no business to be coming at that pace. Who is it? I can't see.”

Down the middle of the dark road a dog cart was approaching at top

speed. Bee seized her father's arm and pulled it vigorously, for Mr.

Pendyce was standing stock-still in disapproval. The dog cart passed

within a foot of him and vanished, swinging round into the station. Mr.

Pendyce turned in his tracks.

“Who was that? Disgraceful! On Sunday, too! The fellow must be drunk; he

nearly ran over my legs. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over----”

Bee answered:

“It was Captain Bellew, Father; I saw his face.” “Bellew? That drunken

fellow? I shall summons him. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over

my----”

“Perhaps he's had bad news,” said Bee. “There's the train going out now;

I do hope he caught it!”

“Bad news! Is that an excuse for driving over me? You hope he caught

it? I hope he's thrown himself out. The ruffian! I hope he's killed

himself.”

In this strain Mr. Pendyce continued until they reached the church. On

their way up the aisle they passed Gregory Vigil leaning forward with

his elbows on the desk and his hand covering his eyes....

At eleven o'clock that night a man stood outside the door of Mrs.

Bellew's flat in Chelsea violently ringing the bell. His face was

deathly white, but his little dark eyes sparkled. The door was opened,

and Helen Bellew in evening dress stood there holding a candle in her

hand.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The man moved into the light.

“Jaspar! You? What on earth----”

“I want to talk.”

“Talk? Do you know what time it is?”

“Time--there's no such thing. You might give me a kiss after two years.

I've been drinking, but I'm not drunk.”

Mrs. Bellew did not kiss him, neither did she draw back her face. No

trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes. She said: “If I let you in,

will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go away?”

The little brown devils danced in Bellew's face. He nodded. They stood

by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came and went

a peculiar smile.

It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had

lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of

human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little

daily things that men and women living together know of each other, and

with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of one's nature, one

had ceased to live. There was nothing for either of them to find out,

and with a little smile, like the smile of knowledge itself, Jaspar

Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each other.

“Well,” she said again; “what have you come for?”

Bellew's face had changed. Its expression was furtive; his mouth

twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.

“How--are--you?” he said in a thick, muttering voice.

Mrs. Bellew's clear voice answered:

“Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?”

The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar's face.

“You look very pretty to-night!”

His wife's lips curled.

“I'm much the same as I always was,” she said.

A violent shudder shook Bellew. He fixed his eyes on the floor a

little beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them. They were quite

lifeless.

“I'm perfectly sober,” he murmured thickly; then with startling

quickness his eyes began to sparkle again. He came a step nearer.

“You're my wife!” he said.

Mrs. Bellew smiled.

“Come,” she answered, “you must go!” and she put out her bare arm to

push him back. But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were

fixed again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.

“What's that?” he stammered. “What's that--that black----?”

The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his face;

it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.

“Don't turn me out,” he stammered; “don't turn me out!”

Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a

sort of pity. She took a quick step and put her hand on his shoulder.

“It's all right, old boy--all right!” she said. “There's nothing there!”

CHAPTER IX

MR. PARAMOR DISPOSES

Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband's wish, still occupied

the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before he got up to

break to him Gregory's decision. The moment was auspicious, for he was

only half awake.

“Horace,” she said, and her face looked young and anxious, “Grig says

that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position. Of course,

I told him that you'd be annoyed, but Grig says that she can't go on

like this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew.”

Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.

“What's that?” he said.

Mrs. Pendyce went on

“I knew it would worry you; but really”--she fixed her eyes on the

ceiling--“I suppose we ought only to think of her.”

The Squire sat up.

“What was that,” he said, “about Bellew?”

Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:

“Don't be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing. If Grig

says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I'm sure she ought.”

Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay with

his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Divorce him!” he said--“I should think so! He ought to be hanged, a

fellow like that. I told you last night he nearly drove over me.

Living just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole

neighbourhood! If I hadn't kept my head he'd have bowled me over like a

ninepin, and Bee into the bargain.”

Mrs. Pendyce sighed.

“It was a narrow escape,” she said.

“Divorce him!” resumed Mr. Pendyce--“I should think so! She ought to

have divorced him long ago. It was the nearest thing in the world;

another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!”

Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.

“At first,” she said, “I wondered whether it was quite--but I'm very

glad you've taken it like this.”

“Taken it! I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one think.

All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering what on

earth would have happened to this estate if--if----” And he looked round

with a frown. “Even as it is, I barely make the two ends of it meet. As

to George, he's no more fit at present to manage it than you are; he'd

make a loss of thousands.”

“I'm afraid George is too much in London. That's the reason I wondered

whether--I'm afraid he sees too much of----”

Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched

herself violently beneath the bedclothes.

“George,” said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, “has no gumption.

He'd never manage a man like Peacock--and you encourage him! He ought to

marry and settle down.”

Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:

“George is very like poor Hubert.”

Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.

“Ah!” But he refrained from adding, “Your people!” for Hubert Totteridge

had not been dead a year. “Ten minutes to eight! You keep me talking

here; it's time I was in my bath.”

Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed,

grey-moustached, slim and erect, he paused at the door.

“The girls haven't a scrap of imagination. What do you think Bee said?

'. hope he hasn't lost his train.' Lost his train! Good God! and I might

have--I might have----” The Squire did not finish his sentence; no words

but what seemed to him violent and extreme would have fulfilled his

conception of the danger he had escaped, and it was against his nature

and his training to exaggerate a physical risk.

At breakfast he was more cordial than usual to Gregory, who was going up

by the first train, for as a rule Mr. Pendyce rather distrusted him, as

one would a wife's cousin, especially if he had a sense of humour.

“A very good fellow,” he was wont to say of him, “but an out-and-out

Radical.” It was the only label he could find for Gregory's

peculiarities.

Gregory departed without further allusion to the object of his visit. He

was driven to the station in a brougham by the first groom, and sat

with his hat off and his head at the open window, as if trying to get

something blown out of his brain. Indeed, throughout the whole of his

journey up to town he looked out of the window, and expressions half

humorous and half puzzled played on his face. Like a panorama slowly

unrolled, country house after country house, church after church,

appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the hedgerows

and the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away on the rising

uplands the slow ploughman drove, outlined against the sky:

He took a cab from the station to his solicitors' in Lincoln's Inn

Fields. He was shown into a room bare of all legal accessories, except a

series of Law Reports and a bunch of violets in a glass of fresh

water. Edmund Paramor, the senior partner of Paramor and Herring, a

clean-shaven man of sixty, with iron-grey hair brushed in a cockscomb

off his forehead, greeted him with a smile.

“Ah, Vigil, how are you? Up from the country?”

“From Worsted Skeynes.”

“Horace Pendyce is a client of mine. Well, what can we do for you? Your

Society up a tree?”

Gregory Vigil, in the padded leather chair that had held so many

aspirants for comfort, sat a full minute without speaking; and Mr.

Paramor, too, after one keen glance at his client that seemed to come

from very far down in his soul, sat motionless and grave. There was at

that moment something a little similar in the eyes of these two very

different men, a look of kindred honesty and aspiration. Gregory spoke

at last.

“It's a painful subject to me.”

Mr. Paramor drew a face on his blotting-paper.

“I have come,” went on Gregory, “about a divorce for my ward.”

“Mrs. Jaspar Bellew?”

“Yes; her position is intolerable.”

Mr. Paramor gave him a searching look.

“Let me see: I think she and her husband have been separated for some

time.”

“Yes, for two years.”

“You're acting with her consent, of course?”

“I have spoken to her.”

“You know the law of divorce, I suppose?”

Gregory answered with a painful smile:

“I'm not very clear about it; I hardly ever look at those cases in the

paper. I hate the whole idea.”

Mr. Paramor smiled again, became instantly grave, and said:

“We shall want evidence of certain things. Have you got any evidence?”

Gregory ran his hand through his hair.

“I don't think there'll be any difficulty,” he said. “Bellew

agrees--they both agree!”

Mr. Paramor stared.

“What's that to do with it?”

Gregory caught him up.

“Surely, where both parties are anxious, and there's no opposition, it

can't be difficult.”

“Good Lord!” said Mr. Paramor.

“But I've seen Bellew; I saw him yesterday. I'm sure I can get him to

admit anything you want!”

Mr. Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.

“Did you ever,” he said drily, “hear of what's called collusion?”

Gregory got up and paced the room.

“I don't know that I've ever heard anything very exact about the thing

at all,” he said. “The whole subject is hateful to me. I regard marriage

as sacred, and when, which God forbid, it proves unsacred, it is

horrible to think of these formalities. This is a Christian country; we

are all flesh and blood. What is this slime, Paramor?”

With this outburst he sank again into the chair, and leaned his head on

his hand. And oddly, instead of smiling, Mr. Paramor looked at him with

haunting eyes.

“Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted,” he said. “One

must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must pose as

an injured person. There must be evidence of misconduct, and in this

case of cruelty or of desertion. The evidence must be impartial. This is

the law.”

Gregory said without looking up:

“But why?”

Mr. Paramor took his violets out of the water, and put them to his nose.

“How do you mean--why?”

“I mean, why this underhand, roundabout way?”

Mr. Paramor's face changed with startling speed from its haunting look

back to his smile.

“Well,” he said, “for the preservation of morality. What do you

suppose?”

“Do you call it moral so to imprison people that you drive them to sin

in order to free themselves?”

Mr. Paramor obliterated the face on his blotting-pad.

“Where's your sense of humour?” he said.

“I see no joke, Paramor.”

Mr. Paramor leaned forward.

“My dear friend,” he said earnestly, “I don't say for a minute that

our system doesn't cause a great deal of quite unnecessary suffering;

I don't say that it doesn't need reform. Most lawyers and almost any

thinking man will tell you that it does. But that's a wide question

which doesn't help us here. We'll manage your business for you, if it

can be done. You've made a bad start, that's all. The first thing is

for us to write to Mrs. Bellew, and ask her to come and see us. We shall

have to get Bellew watched.”

Gregory said:

“That's detestable. Can't it be done without that?”

Mr. Paramor bit his forefinger.

“Not safe,” he said. “But don't bother; we'll see to all that.”

Gregory rose and went to the window. He said suddenly:

“I can't bear this underhand work.”

Mr. Paramor smiled.

“Every honest man,” he said, “feels as you do. But, you see, we must

think of the law.”

Gregory burst out again:

“Can no one get a divorce, then, without making beasts or spies of

themselves?”

Mr. Paramor said gravely

“It is difficult, perhaps impossible. You see, the law is based on

certain principles.”

“Principles?”

A smile wreathed Mr. Paramor's mouth, but died instantly.

“Ecclesiastical principles, and according to these a person desiring a

divorce 'ipso facto' loses caste. That they should have to make spies or

beasts of themselves is not of grave importance.”

Gregory came back to the table, and again buried his head in his hands.

“Don't joke, please, Paramor,” he said; “it's all so painful to me.”

Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted his client's bowed head.

“I'm not joking,” he said. “God forbid! Do you read poetry?” And opening

a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather. “This is a man I'm

fond of:

“'Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone--

KINDNESS in another's trouble,

COURAGE in your own.'

“That seems to me the sum of all philosophy.”

“Paramor,” said Gregory, “my ward is very dear to me; she is dearer to

me than any woman I know. I am here in a most dreadful dilemma. On

the one hand there is this horrible underhand business, with all its

publicity; and on the other there is her position--a beautiful woman,

fond of gaiety, living alone in this London, where every man's instincts

and every woman's tongue look upon her as fair game. It has been brought

home to me only too painfully of late. God forgive me! I have even

advised her to go back to Bellew, but that seems out of the question.

What am I to do?”

Mr. Paramor rose.

“I know,” he said--“I know. My dear friend, I know!” And for a full

minute he remained motionless, a little turned from Gregory. “It will be

better,” he said suddenly, “for her to get rid of him. I'll go and see

her myself. We'll spare her all we can. I'll go this afternoon, and let

you know the result.”

As though by mutual instinct, they put out their hands, which they shook

with averted faces. Then Gregory, seizing his hat, strode out of the

room.

He went straight to the rooms of his Society in Hanover Square. They

were on the top floor, higher than the rooms of any other Society in the

building--so high, in fact, that from their windows, which began five

feet up, you could practically only see the sky.

A girl with sloping shoulders, red cheeks, and dark eyes, was working

a typewriter in a corner, and sideways to the sky at a bureau littered

with addressed envelopes, unanswered letters, and copies of the

Society's publications, was seated a grey-haired lady with a long,

thin, weatherbeaten face and glowing eyes, who was frowning at a page of

manuscript.

“Oh, Mr. Vigil,” she said, “I'm so glad you've come. This paragraph

mustn't go as it is. It will never do.”

Gregory took the manuscript and read the paragraph in question.

“This case of Eva Nevill is so horrible that we ask those of our women

readers who live in the security, luxury perhaps, peace certainly,

of their country homes, what they would have done, finding themselves

suddenly in the position of this poor girl--in a great city, without

friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to all the

craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our womankind.

Let each one ask herself: Should I have resisted where she fell?”

“It will never do to send that out,” said the lady again.

“What is the matter with it, Mrs. Shortman?”

“It's too personal. Think of Lady Malden, or most of our subscribers.

You can't expect them to imagine themselves like poor Eva. I'm sure they

won't like it.”

Gregory clutched at his hair.

“Is it possible they can't stand that?” he said.

“It's only because you've given such horrible details of poor Eva.”

Gregory got up and paced the room.

Mrs. Shortman went on

“You've not lived in the country for so long, Mr. Vigil, that you don't

remember. You see, I know. People don't like to be harrowed. Besides,

think how difficult it is for them to imagine themselves in such a

position. It'll only shock them, and do our circulation harm.”

Gregory snatched up the page and handed it to the girl who sat at the

typewriter in the corner.

“Read that, please, Miss Mallow.”

The girl read without raising her eyes.

“Well, is it what Mrs. Shortman says?”

The girl handed it back with a blush.

“It's perfect, of course, in itself, but I think Mrs. Shortman is right.

It might offend some people.”

Gregory went quickly to the window, threw it up, and stood gazing at the

sky. Both women looked at his back.

Mrs. Shortman said gently:

“I would only just alter it like this, from after 'country homes'.

'.hether they do not pity and forgive this poor girl in a great city,

without friends, without money, almost without clothes, and exposed to

all the craft of one of those fiends in human form who prey upon our

womankind,' and just stop there.”

Gregory returned to the table.

“Not 'forgive,'” he said, “not 'forgive'.”

Mrs. Shortman raised her pen.

“You don't know,” she said, “what a strong feeling there is. Mind, it

has to go to numbers of parsonages, Mr. Vigil. Our principle has always

been to be very careful. And you have been plainer than usual in

stating the case. It's not as if they really could put themselves in

her position; that's impossible. Not one woman in a hundred could,

especially among those who live in the country and have never seen life.

I'm a squire's daughter myself.”

“And I a parson's,” said Gregory, with a smile.

Mrs. Shortman looked at him reproachfully.

“Joking apart, Mr. Vigil, it's touch and go with our paper as it is; we

really can't afford it. I've had lots of letters lately complaining that

we put the cases unnecessarily strongly. Here's one:

“'BOURNEFIELD RECTORY,

“'November 1.

“'DEAR MADAM,

“'While sympathising with your good work, I am afraid I cannot become

a subscriber to your paper while it takes its present form, as I do

not feel that it is always fit reading for my girls. I cannot think

it either wise or right that they should become acquainted with such

dreadful aspects of life, however true they may be.

“'I am, dear madam,

“'Respectfully yours,

“'WINIFRED TUDDENHAM.

“'P.S.--I could never feel sure, too, that my maids would not pick it

up, and perhaps take harm.'.

“I had that only this morning.”

Gregory buried his face in his hands, and sitting thus he looked so like

a man praying that no one spoke. When he raised his face it was to say:

“Not 'forgive,' Mrs. Shortman, not 'forgive'.”

Mrs. Shortman ran her pen through the word.

“Very well, Mr. Vigil,” she said; “it's a risk.”

The sound of the typewriter, which had been hushed, began again from the

corner.

“That case of drink, Mr. Vigil--Millicent Porter--I'm afraid there's

very little hope there.”

Gregory asked:

“What now?”

“Relapsed again; it's the fifth time.”

Gregory turned his face to the window, and looked at the sky.

“I must go and see her. Just give me her address.”

Mrs. Shortman read from a green book:

“'Mrs. Porter, 2 Bilcock Buildings, Bloomsbury.' Mr. Vigil!”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Vigil, I do sometimes wish you would not persevere so long with

those hopeless cases; they never seem to come to anything, and your time

is so valuable.”

“How can I give them up, Mrs. Shortman? There's no choice.”

“But, Mr. Vigil, why is there no choice? You must draw the line

somewhere. Do forgive me for saying that I think you sometimes waste

your time.”

Gregory turned to the girl at the typewriter.

“Miss Mallow, is Mrs. Shortman right? do I waste my time?”

The girl at the typewriter blushed vividly, and, without looking round,

said:

“How can I tell, Mr. Vigil? But it does worry one.”

A humorous and perplexed smile passed over Gregory's lips.

“Now I know I shall cure her,” he said. “2 Bilcock Buildings.” And he

continued to look at the sky. “How's your neuralgia, Mrs. Shortman?”

Mrs. Shortman smiled.

“Awful!”

Gregory turned quickly.

“You feel that window, then; I'm so sorry.”

Mrs. Shortman shook her head.

“No, but perhaps Molly does.”

The girl at the typewriter said:

“Oh no; please, Mr. Vigil, don't shut it for me.”

“Truth and honour?”

“Truth and honour,” replied both women. And all three for a moment sat

looking at the sky. Then Mrs. Shortman said:

“You see, you can't get to the root of the evil--that husband of hers.”

Gregory turned.

“Ah,” he said, “that man! If she could only get rid of him! That ought

to have been done long ago, before he drove her to drink like this. Why

didn't she, Mrs. Shortman, why didn't she?”

Mrs. Shortman raised her eyes, which had such a peculiar spiritual glow.

“I don't suppose she had the money,” she said; “and she must have been

such a nice woman then. A nice woman doesn't like to divorce--”

Gregory looked at her.

“What, Mrs. Shortman, you too, you too among the Pharisees?”

Mrs. Shortman flushed.

“She wanted to save him,” she said; “she must have wanted to save him.”

“Then you and I----” But Gregory did not finish, and turned again to

the window. Mrs. Shortman, too, biting her lips, looked anxiously at the

sky.

Miss Mallow at the typewriter, with a scared face, plied her fingers

faster than ever.

Gregory was the first to speak.

“You must please forgive me,” he said gently. “A personal matter; I

forgot myself.”

Mrs. Shortman withdrew her gaze from the sky.

“Oh, Mr. Vigil, if I had known----”

Gregory Gregory smiled.

“Don't, don't!” he said; “we've quite frightened poor Miss Mallow!”

Miss Mallow looked round at him, he looked at her, and all three once

more looked at the sky. It was the chief recreation of this little

society.

Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he

lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. He took an omnibus, and

getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat

in his hand. He was thinking of Helen Bellew. It had become a habit with

him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex--a habit in

which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not part.

And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and thought:

'.hat a fine-looking man!'

But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics'

Club, smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little

unpleasant to George.

Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got

out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of

woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who

cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through

his nerves and a habit of blood to the head. Extravagance, she said,

I cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant

enough. For his temperament (not uncommon in a misty climate) had been

born seven feet high; and as a man cannot add a cubit to his stature,

so neither can he take one off. Gregory could not bear that a yellow man

must always remain a yellow man, but trusted by care and attention some

day to see him white. There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as

distinct from every other mortal's as his face is different from their

faces; but Gregory believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must

gain in time a likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often

that they had been mistaken. Other men in this Great Britain had the

same belief.

To Gregory's reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had been

born refined. A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his noblest

efforts. Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady Malden the

night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.

He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with reverence

he made the tour of the building and back again. He had long fixed a

rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a fortnight; but to

pass her windows he went out of his way most days and nights. And having

made this tour, not conscious of having done anything ridiculous, still

smiling, and with his hat on his knee, perhaps really happier because he

had not seen her, was driven East, once more passing George Pendyce in

the bow-window of the Stoics' Club, and once more raising on his face a

jeering smile.

He had been back at his rooms in Buckingham Street half an hour when a

club commissionaire arrived with Mr. Paramor's promised letter.

He opened it hastily.

“THE NELSON CLUB,

“TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

“MY DEAR VIGIL,

“I've just come from seeing your ward. An embarrassing complexion is

lent to affairs by what took place last night. It appears that after

your visit to him yesterday afternoon her husband came up to town,

and made his appearance at her flat about eleven o'clock. He was in a

condition bordering on delirium tremens, and Mrs. Bellew was obliged to

keep him for the night. 'I could not,' she said to me, 'have refused a

dog in such a state.' The visit lasted until this afternoon--in fact,

the man had only just gone when I arrived. It is a piece of irony, of

which I must explain to you the importance. I think I told you that the

law of divorce is based on certain principles. One of these excludes any

forgiveness of offences by the party moving for a divorce. In technical

language, any such forgiveness or overlooking is called condonation, and

it is a complete bar to further action for the time being. The Court is

very jealous of this principle of non-forgiveness, and will regard with

grave suspicion any conduct on the part of the offended party which

might be construed as amounting to condonation. I fear that what your

ward tells me will make it altogether inadvisable to apply for a divorce

on any evidence that may lie in the past. It is too dangerous. In other

words, the Court would almost certainly consider that she has condoned

offences so far. Any further offence, however, will in technical

language 'revive' the past, and under these circumstances, though

nothing can be done at present, there may be hope in the future. After

seeing your ward, I quite appreciate your anxiety in the matter, though

I am by no means sure that you are right in advising this divorce. If

you remain in the same mind, however, I will give the matter my best

personal attention, and my counsel to you is not to worry. This is no

matter for a layman, especially not for one who, like you, judges of

things rather as they ought to be than as they are.

“I am, my dear Vigil,

“Very sincerely yours,

“EDMUND PARAMOR.

“GREGORY VIGIL, ESQ.

“If you want to see me, I shall be at my club all the evening.-E. P.”

When Gregory had read this note he walked to the window, and stood

looking out over the lights on the river. His heart beat furiously, his

temples were crimson. He went downstairs, and took a cab to the Nelson

Club.

Mr. Paramor, who was about to dine, invited his visitor to join him.

Gregory shook his head.

“No, thanks,” he said; “I don't feel like dining. What is this, Paramor?

Surely there's some mistake? Do you mean to tell me that because she

acted like a Christian to that man she is to be punished for it in this

way?”

Mr. Paramor bit his finger.

“Don't confuse yourself by dragging in Christianity. Christianity has

nothing to do with law.”

“You talked of principles,” said Gregory--“ecclesiastical.”

“Yes, yes; I meant principles imported from the old ecclesiastical

conception of marriage, which held man and wife to be undivorceable.

That conception has been abandoned by the law, but the principles still

haunt----”

“I don't understand.”

Mr. Paramor said slowly:

“I don't know that anyone does. It's our usual muddle. But I know this,

Vigil--in such a case as your ward's we must tread very carefully. We

must 'save face,' as the Chinese say. We must pretend we don't want to

bring this divorce, but that we have been so injured that we are obliged

to come forward. If Bellew says nothing, the Judge will have to take

what's put before him. But there's always the Queen's Proctor. I don't

know if you know anything about him?”

“No,” said Gregory, “I don't.”

“Well, if he can find out anything against our getting this divorce, he

will. It is not my habit to go into Court with a case in which anybody

can find out anything.”

“Do you mean to say--”

“I mean to say that she must not ask for a divorce merely because she

is miserable, or placed in a position that no woman should be placed in,

but only if she has been offended in certain technical ways; and if--by

condonation, for instance--she has given the Court technical reason

for refusing her a divorce, that divorce will be refused her. To get a

divorce, Vigil, you must be as hard as nails and as wary as a cat. Now

do you understand?”

Gregory did not answer.

Mr. Paramor looked searchingly and rather pityingly in his face.

“It won't do to go for it at present,” he said. “Are you still set on

this divorce? I told you in my letter that I am not sure you are right.”

“How can you ask me, Paramor? After that man's conduct last night, I am

more than ever set on it.”

“Then,” said Mr. Paramor, “we must keep a sharp eye on Bellew, and hope

for the best.”

Gregory held out his hand.

“You spoke of morality,” he said. “I can't tell you how inexpressibly

mean the whole thing seems to me. Goodnight.”

And, turning rather quickly, he went out.

His mind was confused and his heart torn. He thought of Helen Bellew as

of the woman dearest to him in the coils of a great slimy serpent, and

the knowledge that each man and woman unhappily married was, whether

by his own, his partner's, or by no fault at all, in the same embrace,

afforded him no comfort whatsoever. It was long before he left the windy

streets to go to his home.

CHAPTER X

AT BLAFARD'S

There comes now and then to the surface of our modern civilisation one

of those great and good men who, unconscious, like all great and good

men, of the goodness and greatness of their work, leave behind a lasting

memorial of themselves before they go bankrupt.

It was so with the founder of the Stoics' Club.

He came to the surface in the year 187-, with nothing in the world but

his clothes and an idea. In a single year he had floated the Stoics'

Club, made ten thousand pounds, lost more, and gone down again.

The Stoics' Club lived after him by reason of the immortal beauty of his

idea. In 1891 it was a strong and corporate body, not perhaps quite so

exclusive as it had been, but, on the whole, as smart and aristocratic

as any club in London, with the exception of that one or two into which

nobody ever got. The idea with which its founder had underpinned the

edifice was, like all great ideas, simple, permanent, and perfect--so

simple, permanent, and perfect that it seemed amazing no one had ever

thought of it before. It was embodied in No. 1 of the members' rules:

“No member of this club shall have any occupation whatsoever.”

Hence the name of a club renowned throughout London for the excellence

of its wines and cuisine.

Its situation was in Piccadilly, fronting the Green Park, and through

the many windows of its ground-floor smoking-room the public were

privileged to see at all hours of the day numbers of Stoics in various

attitudes reading the daily papers or gazing out of the window.

Some of them who did not direct companies, grow fruit, or own yachts,

wrote a book, or took an interest in a theatre. The greater part eked

out existence by racing horses, hunting foxes, and shooting birds.

Individuals among them, however, had been known to play the piano, and

take up the Roman Catholic religion. Many explored the same spots of

the Continent year after year at stated seasons. Some belonged to the

Yeomanry; others called themselves barristers; once in a way one painted

a picture or devoted himself to good works. They were, in fact, of

all sorts and temperaments, but their common characteristic was an

independent income, often so settled by Providence that they could not

in any way get rid of it.

But though the principle of no occupation overruled all class

distinctions, the Stoics were mainly derived from the landed gentry.

An instinct that the spirit of the club was safest with persons of

this class guided them in their elections, and eldest sons, who became

members almost as a matter of course, lost no time in putting up their

younger brothers, thereby keeping the wine as pure as might be, and

preserving that fine old country-house flavour which is nowhere so

appreciated as in London.

After seeing Gregory pass on the top of a bus, George Pendyce went into

the card-room, and as it was still empty, set to contemplation of the

pictures on the walls. They were effigies of all those members of

the Stoics' Club who from time to time had come under the notice of a

celebrated caricaturist in a celebrated society paper. Whenever a Stoic

appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside

his fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he

came to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly

cut clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across

him. His head, disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black

billycock hat with a very flat brim. The artist had thought long and

carefully over the face. The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as

to convey a feeling of the unimaginative joy of life, but to their shape

and complexion was imparted a suggestion of obstinacy and choler. To

the eyes was given a glazed look, and between them set a little line, as

though their owner were thinking:

'.ard work, hard work! Noblesse oblige. I must keep it going!'

Underneath was written: “The Ambler.”

George stood long looking at the apotheosis of his fame. His star was

high in the heavens. With the eye of his mind he saw a long procession

of turf triumphs, a long vista of days and nights, and in them, round

them, of them--Helen Bellow; and by an odd coincidence, as he stood

there, the artist's glazed look came over his eyes, the little line

sprang up between them.

He turned at the sound of voices and sank into a chair. To have been

caught thus gazing at himself would have jarred on his sense of what was

right.

It was twenty minutes past seven, when, in evening dress, he left the

club, and took a shilling's-worth to Buckingham Gate. Here he dismissed

his cab, and turned up the large fur collar of his coat. Between the

brim of his opera-hat and the edge of that collar nothing but his eyes

were visible. He waited, compressing his lips, scrutinising each hansom

that went by. In the soft glow of one coming fast he saw a hand raised

to the trap. The cab stopped; George stepped out of the shadow and got

in. The cab went on, and Mrs. Bellew's arm was pressed against his own.

It was their simple formula for arriving at a restaurant together.

In the third of several little rooms, where the lights were shaded, they

sat down at a table in a corner, facing each a wall, and, underneath,

her shoe stole out along the floor and touched his patent leather boot.

In their eyes, for all their would-be wariness, a light smouldered which

would not be put out. An habitue, sipping claret at a table across the

little room, watched them in a mirror, and there came into his old heart

a glow of warmth, half ache, half sympathy; a smile of understanding

stirred the crow's-feet round his eyes. Its sweetness ebbed, and left

a little grin about his shaven lips. Behind the archway in the

neighbouring room two waiters met, and in their nods and glances was

that same unconscious sympathy, the same conscious grin. And the old

habitue thought:

'.ow long will it last?'.... “Waiter, some coffee and my bill!”

He had meant to go to the play, but he lingered instead to look at Mrs.

Bellew's white shoulders and bright eyes in the kindly mirror. And he

thought:

'.oung days at present. Ah, young days!'....

“Waiter, a Benedictine!” And hearing her laugh, O his old heart ached.

'.o one,' he thought, 'will ever laugh like that for me again!'....

“Here, waiter, how's this? You've charged me for an ice!” But when the

waiter had gone he glanced back into the mirror, and saw them clink

their glasses filled with golden bubbling wine, and he thought: 'Wish

you good luck! For a flash of those teeth, my dear, I'd give----'

But his eyes fell on the paper flowers adorning his little table--yellow

and red and green; hard, lifeless, tawdry. He saw them suddenly as they

were, with the dregs of wine in his glass, the spill of gravy on the

cloth, the ruin of the nuts that he had eaten. Wheezing and coughing,

'.his place is not what it was,' he thought; 'I shan't come here again!'

He struggled into his coat to go, but he looked once more in the mirror,

and met their eyes resting on himself. In them he read the careless

pity of the young for the old. His eyes answered the reflection of their

eyes, 'Wait, wait! It is young days yet! I wish you no harm, my dears!'

and limping-for one of his legs was lame--he went away.

But George and his partner sat on, and with every glass of wine the

light in their eyes grew brighter. For who was there now in the room

to mind? Not a living soul! Only a tall, dark young waiter, a little

cross-eyed, who was in consumption; only the little wine-waiter, with a

pallid face, and a look as if he suffered. And the whole world seemed

of the colour of the wine they had been drinking; but they talked of

indifferent things, and only their eyes, bemused and shining, really

spoke. The dark young waiter stood apart, unmoving, and his cross-eyed

glance, fixed on her shoulders, had all unconsciously the longing of

a saint in some holy picture. Unseen, behind the serving screen, the

little wine-waiter poured out and drank a glass from a derelict bottle.

Through a chink of the red blinds an eye peered in from the chill

outside, staring and curious, till its owner passed on in the cold.

It was long after nine when they rose. The dark young waiter laid her

cloak upon her with adoring hands. She looked back at him, and in her

eyes was an infinite indulgence. 'God knows,' she seemed to say, 'if I

could make you happy as well, I would. Why should one suffer? Life is

strong and good!'

The young waiter's cross-eyed glance fell before her, and he bowed

above the money in his hand. Quickly before them the little wine-waiter

hurried to the door, his suffering face screwed into one long smile.

“Good-night, madam; good-night, sir. Thank you very much!”

And he, too, remained bowed over his hand, and his smile relaxed.

But in the cab George's arm stole round her underneath the cloak, and

they were borne on in the stream of hurrying hansoms, carrying couples

like themselves, cut off from all but each other's eyes, from all but

each other's touch; and with their eyes turned in the half-dark they

spoke together in low tones.

PART II

CHAPTER I

GREGORY REOPENS THE CAMPAIGN

At one end of the walled garden which Mr. Pendyce had formed in

imitation of that at dear old Strathbegally, was a virgin orchard of

pear and cherry trees. They blossomed early, and by the end of the third

week in April the last of the cherries had broken into flower. In the

long grass, underneath, a wealth of daffodils, jonquils, and narcissus,

came up year after year, and sunned their yellow stars in the light

which dappled through the blossom.

And here Mrs. Pendyce would come, tan gauntlets on her hands, and stand,

her face a little flushed with stooping, as though the sight of all that

bloom was restful. It was due to her that these old trees escaped year

after year the pruning and improvements which the genius of the

Squire would otherwise have applied. She had been brought up in an old

Totteridge tradition that fruit-trees should be left to themselves,

while her husband, possessed of a grasp of the subject not more than

usually behind the times, was all for newer methods. She had fought for

those trees. They were as yet the only things she had fought for in

her married life, and Horace Pendyce still remembered with a discomfort

robbed by time of poignancy how she had stood with her back to their

bedroom door and said, “If you cut those poor trees, Horace, I won't

live here!” He had at once expressed his determination to have them

pruned; but, having put off the action for a day or two, the trees still

stood unpruned thirty-three years later. He had even come to feel rather

proud of the fact that they continued to bear fruit, and would speak

of them thus: “Queer fancy of my wife's, never been cut. And yet,

remarkable thing, they do better than any of the others!”

This spring, when all was so forward, and the cuckoos already in full

song, when the scent of young larches in the New Plantation (planted

the year of George's birth) was in the air like the perfume of celestial

lemons, she came to the orchard more than usual, and her spirit felt the

stirring, the old, half-painful yearning for she knew not what, that

she had felt so often in her first years at Worsted Skeynes. And sitting

there on a green-painted seat under the largest of the cherry-trees, she

thought even more than her wont of George, as though her son's spirit,

vibrating in its first real passion, were calling to her for sympathy.

He had been down so little all that winter, twice for a couple of days'

shooting, once for a week-end, when she had thought him looking thinner

and rather worn. He had missed Christmas for the first time. With

infinite precaution she had asked him casually if he had seen Helen

Bellew, and he had answered, “Oh yes, I see her once in a way!”

Secretly all through the winter she consulted the Times newspaper for

mention of George's horse, and was disappointed not to find any. One

day, however, in February, discovering him absolutely at the head of

several lists of horses with figures after them, she wrote off at once

with a joyful heart. Of five lists in which the Ambler's name appeared,

there was only one in which he was second. George's answer came in the

course of a week or so.

“MY DEAR MOTHER,

“What you saw were the weights for the Spring Handicaps. They've simply

done me out of everything. In great haste,

“Your affectionate son,

“GEORGE PENDYCE.”

As the spring approached, the vision of her independent visit to London,

which had sustained her throughout the winter, having performed its

annual function, grew mistier and mistier, and at last faded away. She

ceased even to dream of it, as though it had never been, nor did George

remind her, and as usual, she ceased even to wonder whether he would

remind her. She thought instead of the season visit, and its scurry of

parties, with a sort of languid fluttering. For Worsted Skeynes, and all

that Worsted Skeynes stood for, was like a heavy horseman guiding her

with iron hands along a narrow lane; she dreamed of throwing him in the

open, but the open she never reached.

She woke at seven with her tea, and from seven to eight made little

notes on tablets, while on his back Mr. Pendyce snored lightly. She rose

at eight. At nine she poured out coffee. From half-past nine to ten

she attended to the housekeeper and her birds. From ten to eleven she

attended to the gardener and her dress. From eleven to twelve she wrote

invitations to persons for whom she did not care, and acceptances to

persons who did not care for her; she drew out also and placed in due

sequence cheques for Mr. Pendyce's signature; and secured receipts,

carefully docketed on the back, within an elastic band; as a rule, also,

she received a visit from Mrs. Husell Barter. From twelve to one she

walked with her and “the dear dogs” to the village, where she stood

hesitatingly in the cottage doors of persons who were shy of her. From

half-past one to two she lunched. From two to three she rested on a sofa

in the white morning-room with the newspaper in her hand, trying to read

the Parliamentary debate, and thinking of other things. From three to

half-past four she went to her dear flowers, from whom she was liable

to be summoned at any moment by the arrival of callers; or, getting into

the carriage, was driven to some neighbour's mansion, where she sat for

half an hour and came away. At half-past four she poured out tea. At

five she knitted a tie, or socks, for George or Gerald, and listened

with a gentle smile to what was going on. From six to seven she received

from the Squire his impressions of Parliament and things at large. From

seven to seven-thirty she changed to a black low dress, with old lace

about the neck. At seven-thirty she dined. At a quarter to nine she

listened to Norah playing two waltzes of Chopin's, and a piece called

“Serenade du Printemps” by Baff, and to Bee singing “The Mikado,” or the

“Saucy Girl” From nine to ten thirty she played a game called piquet,

which her father had taught her, if she could get anyone with whom to

play; but as this was seldom, she played as a rule patience by herself.

At ten-thirty she went to bed. At eleven-thirty punctually the Squire

woke her. At one o'clock she went to sleep. On Mondays she wrote out

in her clear Totteridge hand, with its fine straight strokes, a list of

library books, made up without distinction of all that were recommended

in the Ladies' Paper that came weekly to Worsted Skeynes. Periodically

Mr. Pendyce would hand her a list of his own, compiled out of the Times

and the Field in the privacy of his study; this she sent too.

Thus was the household supplied with literature unerringly adapted to

its needs; nor was it possible for any undesirable book to find its way

into the house--not that this would have mattered much to Mrs. Pendyce,

for as she often said with gentle regret, “My dear, I have no time to

read.”

This afternoon it was so warm that the bees were all around among the

blossoms, and two thrushes, who had built in a yew-tree that watched

over the Scotch garden, were in a violent flutter because one of their

chicks had fallen out of the nest. The mother bird, at the edge of the

long orchard grass, was silent, trying by example to still the tiny

creature's cheeping, lest it might attract some large or human thing.

Mrs. Pendyce, sitting under the oldest cherry-tree, looked for the

sound, and when she had located it, picked up the baby bird, and, as she

knew the whereabouts of all the nests, put it back into its cradle,

to the loud terror and grief of the parent birds. She went back to the

bench and sat down again.

She had in her soul something of the terror of the mother thrush. The

Maldens had been paying the call that preceded their annual migration to

town, and the peculiar glow which Lady Malden had the power of raising

had not yet left her cheeks. True, she had the comfort of the thought,

'.llen Malden is so bourgeoise,' but to-day it did not still her heart.

Accompanied by one pale daughter who never left her, and two pale dogs

forced to run all the way, now lying under the carriage with their

tongues out, Lady Malden had come and stayed full time; and for

three-quarters of that time she had seemed, as it were, labouring under

a sense of duty unfulfilled; for the remaining quarter Mrs. Pendyce had

laboured under a sense of duty fulfilled.

“My dear,” Lady Malden had said, having told the pale daughter to go

into the conservatory, “I'm the last person in the world to repeat

gossip, as you know; but I think it's only right to tell you that I've

been hearing things. You see, my boy Fred” (who would ultimately become

Sir Frederick Malden) “belongs to the same club as your son George--the

Stoics. All young men belong there of course--I mean, if they're anybody.

I'm sorry to say there's no doubt about it; your son has been seen

dining at--perhaps I ought not to mention the name--Blafard's, with Mrs.

Bellew. I dare say you don't know what sort of a place Blafard's is--a

lot of little rooms where people go when they don't want to be seen.

I've never been there, of course; but I can imagine it perfectly. And

not once, but frequently. I thought I would speak to you, because I do

think it's so scandalous of her in her position.”

An azalea in a blue and white pot had stood between them, and in this

plant Mrs. Pendyce buried her cheeks and eyes; but when she raised her

face her eyebrows were lifted to their utmost limit, her lips trembled

with anger.

“Oh,” she said, “didn't you know? There's nothing in that; it's the

latest thing!”

For a moment Lady Malden wavered, then duskily flushed; her temperament

and principles had recovered themselves.

“If that,” she said with some dignity, “is the latest thing, I think it

is quite time we were back in town.”

She rose, and as she rose, such was her unfortunate conformation, it

flashed through Mrs. Pendyce's mind 'Why was I afraid? She's only--' And

then as quickly: 'Poor woman! how can she help her legs being short?'

But when she was gone, side by side with the pale daughter, the pale

dogs once more running behind the carriage, Margery Pendyce put her hand

to her heart.

And out here amongst the bees and blossom, where the blackbirds were

improving each minute their new songs, and the air was so fainting sweet

with scents, her heart would not be stilled, but throbbed as though

danger were coming on herself; and she saw her son as a little boy again

in a dirty holland suit with a straw hat down the back of his neck,

flushed and sturdy, as he came to her from some adventure.

And suddenly a gush of emotion from deep within her heart and the

heart of the spring day, a sense of being severed from him by a great,

remorseless power, came over her; and taking out a tiny embroidered

handkerchief, she wept. Round her the bees hummed carelessly, the

blossom dropped, the dappled sunlight covered her with a pattern as of

her own fine lace. From the home farm came the lowing of the cows on

their way to milking, and, strange sound in that well-ordered home, a

distant piping on a penny flute ....

“Mother, Mother, Mo-o-ther!”

Mrs. Pendyce passed her handkerchief across her eyes, and instinctively

obeying the laws of breeding, her face lost all trace of its emotion.

She waited, crumpling the tiny handkerchief in her gauntleted hand.

“Mother! Oh, there you are! Here's Gregory Vigil!”

Norah, a fox-terrier on either side, was coming down the path; behind

her, unhatted, showed Gregory's sanguine face between his wings of

grizzled hair.

“I suppose you're going to talk. I'm going over to the Rectory. Ta-to!”

And preceded by her dogs, Norah went on.

Mrs. Pendyce put out her hand.

“Well, Grig,” she said, “this is a surprise.”

Gregory seated himself beside her on the bench.

“I've brought you this,” he said. “I want you to look at it before I

answer.”

Mrs. Pendyce, who vaguely felt that he would want her to see things as

he was seeing them, took a letter from him with a sinking heart.

“Private.

“LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,

“April 21, 1892.

“MY DEAR VIGIL,

“I have now secured such evidence as should warrant our instituting

a suit. I've written your ward to that effect, and am awaiting her

instructions. Unfortunately, we have no act of cruelty, and I've been

obliged to draw her attention to the fact that, should her husband

defend the suit, it will be very difficult to get the Court to accept

their separation in the light of desertion on his part--difficult

indeed, even if he doesn't defend the suit. In divorce cases one has to

remember that what has to be kept out is often more important than what

has to be got in, and it would be useful to know, therefore, whether

there is likelihood of opposition. I do not advise any direct

approaching of the husband, but if you are possessed of the information

you might let me know. I hate humbug, my dear Vigil, and I hate anything

underhand, but divorce is always a dirty business, and while the law

is shaped as at present, and the linen washed in public, it will remain

impossible for anyone, guilty or innocent, and even for us lawyers, to

avoid soiling our hands in one way or another. I regret it as much as

you do.

“There is a new man writing verse in the Tertiary, some of it quite

first-rate. You might look at the last number. My blossom this year is

magnificent.

“With kind regards, I am,

“Very sincerely yours,

“EDMUND PARAMOR.

“Gregory Vigil, Esq.”

Mrs. Pendyce dropped the letter in her lap, and looked at her cousin.

“He was at Harrow with Horace. I do like him. He is one of the very

nicest men I know.”

It was clear that she was trying to gain time.

Gregory began pacing up and down.

“Paramor is a man for whom I have the highest respect. I would trust him

before anyone.”

It was clear that he, too, was trying to gain time.

“Oh, mind my daffodils, please!”

Gregory went down on his knees, and raised the bloom that he had trodden

on. He then offered it to Mrs. Pendyce. The action was one to which she

was so unaccustomed that it struck her as slightly ridiculous.

“My dear Grig, you'll get rheumatism, and spoil that nice suit; the

grass comes off so terribly!”

Gregory got up, and looked shamefacedly at his knees.

“The knee is not what it used to be,” he said.

Mrs. Pendyce smiled.

“You should keep your knees for Helen Bellow, Grig. I was always five

years older than you.”

Gregory rumpled up his hair.

“Kneeling's out of fashion, but I thought in the country you wouldn't

mind!”

“You don't notice things, dear Grig. In the country it's still more out

of fashion. You wouldn't find a woman within thirty miles of here who

would like a man to kneel to her. We've lost the habit. She would think

she was being made fun of. We soon grow out of vanity!”

“In London,” said Gregory, “I hear all women intend to be men; but in

the country I thought----”

“In the country, Grig, all women would like to be men, but they don't

dare to try. They trot behind.”

As if she had been guilty of thoughts too insightful, Mrs. Pendyce

blushed.

Gregory broke out suddenly:

“I can't bear to think of women like that!”

Again Mrs. Pendyce smiled.

“You see, Grig dear, you are not married.”

“I detest the idea that marriage changes our views, Margery; I loathe

it.”

“Mind my daffodils!” murmured Mrs. Pendyce.

She was thinking all the time: 'That dreadful letter! What am I to do?'

And as though he knew her thoughts, Gregory said:

“I shall assume that Bellew will not defend the case. If he has a spark

of chivalry in him he will be only too glad to see her free. I will

never believe that any man could be such a soulless clod as to wish to

keep her bound. I don't pretend to understand the law, but it seems to

me that there's only one way for a man to act and after all Bellew's a

gentleman. You'll see that he will act like one!”

Mrs. Pendyce looked at the daffodil in her lap.

“I have only seen him three or four times, but it seemed to me, Grig,

that he was a man who might act in one way today and another tomorrow.

He is so very different from all the men about here.”

“When it comes to the deep things of life,” said Gregory, “one man is

much as another. Is there any man you know who would be so lacking in

chivalry as to refuse in these circumstances?”

Mrs. Pendyce looked at him with a confused expression--wonder,

admiration, irony, and even fear, struggled in her eyes.

“I can think of dozens.”

Gregory clutched his forehead.

“Margery,” he said, “I hate your cynicism. I don't know where you get it

from.”

“I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to be cynical--I didn't, really. I only

spoke from what I've seen.”

“Seen?” said Gregory. “If I were to go by what I saw daily, hourly, in

London in the course of my work I should commit suicide within a week.”

“But what else can one go by?”

Without answering, Gregory walked to the edge of the orchard, and stood

gazing over the Scotch garden, with his face a little tilted towards the

sky. Mrs. Pendyce felt he was grieving that she failed to see whatever

it was he saw up there, and she was sorry. He came back, and said:

“We won't discuss it any more.”

Very dubiously she heard those words, but as she could not express the

anxiety and doubt torturing her soul, she told him tea was ready. But

Gregory would not come in just yet out of the sun.

In the drawing-room Beatrix was already giving tea to young Tharp and

the Reverend Husell Barter. And the sound of these well-known voices

restored to Mrs. Pendyce something of her tranquillity. The Rector came

towards her at once with a teacup in his hand.

“My wife has got a headache,” he said. “She wanted to come over with

me, but I made her lie down. Nothing like lying down for a headache. We

expect it in June, you know. Let me get you your tea.”

Mrs. Pendyce, already aware even to the day of what he expected in June,

sat down, and looked at Mr. Barter with a slight feeling of surprise. He

was really a very good fellow; it was nice of him to make his wife lie

down! She thought his broad, red-brown face, with its protecting, not

unhumorous, lower lip, looked very friendly. Roy, the Skye terrier at

her feet, was smelling at the reverend gentleman's legs with a slow

movement of his tail.

“The old dog likes me,” said the Rector; “they know a dog-lover when

they see one wonderful creatures, dogs! I'm sometimes tempted to think

they may have souls!”

Mrs. Pendyce answered:

“Horace says he's getting too old.”

The dog looked up in her face, and her lip quivered.

The Rector laughed.

“Don't you worry about that; there's plenty of life in him.” And he

added unexpectedly: “I couldn't bear to put a dog away, the friend of

man. No, no; let Nature see to that.”

Over at the piano Bee and young Tharp were turning the pages of the

“Saucy Girl”; the room was full of the scent of azaleas; and Mr. Barter,

astride of a gilt chair, looked almost sympathetic, gazing tenderly at

the old Skye.

Mrs. Pendyce felt a sudden yearning to free her mind, a sudden longing

to ask a man's advice.

“Oh, Mr. Barter,” she said, “my cousin, Gregory Vigil, has just brought

me some news; it is confidential, please. Helen Bellew is going to

sue for a divorce. I wanted to ask you whether you could tell me----”

Looking in the Rector's face, she stopped.

“A divorce! H'm! Really!”

A chill of terror came over Mrs. Pendyce.

“Of course you will not mention it to anyone, not even to Horace. It has

nothing to do with us.”

Mr. Barter bowed; his face wore the expression it so often wore in

school on Sunday mornings.

“H'm!” he said again.

It flashed through Mrs. Pendyce that this man with the heavy jowl and

menacing eyes, who sat so square on that flimsy chair, knew something.

It was as though he had answered:

“This is not a matter for women; you will be good enough to leave it to

me.”

With the exception of those few words of Lady Malden's, and the

recollection of George's face when he had said, “Oh yes, I see her now

and then,” she had no evidence, no knowledge, nothing to go on; but she

knew from some instinctive source that her son was Mrs. Bellew's lover.

So, with terror and a strange hope, she saw Gregory entering the room.

“Perhaps,” she thought, “he will make Grig stop it.”

She poured out Gregory's tea, followed Bee and Cecil Tharp into the

conservatory, and left the two men together: